Rituals of DisEnchantment

So sad. So terribly, terribly sad even after all this time.

2011-12-04T21:37:00.000-05:00

I Can't Believe I'm Doing This

2011-01-23T14:20:00.007-05:00

I'm viewing the New Year's slideshow on the SYDA site, listening to Raga Taranga for the first time in what seems like many years. It is bittersweet to hear that melody and see again those photos of the South Fallsburg ashram, to indulge in the remembrance of the many years we spent there together, the thousand and one magical summer nights, the cold winter days blanketed with snow and ice but warm, so warm inside the temple, wrapped in our shawls, breathing in unison as we sang the arati and followed with avid eyes the arc of flame circling before Bade Baba's murti.

This is pure nostalgia, yes, but I feel myself wanting to give in to its spell. Perhaps disenchantment is not a permanent state after all but, like grace, one which can both be attained and fallen from.

It wasn't Eden, but we were once all together, doing japa as we strolled around the lake in Fallsburg, meditating in the gardens of Ganeshpuri, exulting in our communal state of grace (so we once believed.) And this is not exile, but we are far apart now, living separate existences and dealing with the consequences of the fall of Siddha Yoga. "In this vale of tears", in the words of an old prayer.

Maybe it's also a consequence of getting older. Probably. It's true that I've begun to feel the mass of years piling up. I've reached that point when I understand viscerally, not just intellectually, that I have less time ahead than behind me. When you're young life is one long projecting arc, the flame of a rocket trailing always upwards. You can see the horizon of your life but it is a faint and distant line way below, almost an illusion that seems to constantly recede as you approach it, and you are sailing up and away far, far above it.

After all those years of burning fuel and hurtling ahead, how strange now to want to arrest that arc, turn it backwards. That's the impetus behind nostalgia, this need to throw your arms around the past as well as the present in order to embrace the full span of your years. At least it is for me. And when I start to feel this way it seems an act of complete wastefulness to discard so many memories simply because I no longer believe now as I did then.

Because faith and practice are what bound us Siddha Yogis together, they can seem the sum and substance of those years, and the dissolution of faith and abandonment of practice call into question the value and meaning of decades of our lives. If so, this is terribly sad.

Maybe there is a further shore of disenchantment, where the rejection of belief is final and where our hearts, having done the hard work of healing, can now begin to reclaim the sweetness of memory. It's not so different from the dissolution of a long relationship--you know you're finally and truly over them when you can look back and enjoy memories of the good times.

I'm not speaking here of Gurumayi, necessarily, but of our memories of one another. Maybe I'm alone in this. I have had a life long tendency to forget the past and live in the present, so this looking back is a new thing for me. I remember so many friends I've loved in Siddha Yoga, many of whom stayed when I left, complicating what had always been such simple friendships. I miss them terribly.

RESURRECTION!

2010-10-28T16:43:00.003-04:00

The last time I checked RoD was two weeks ago and everything was quiet on the Western front, as the old folks used to say. Imagine my surprise to visit today and see some 70+ comments on the last post. Granted, more then a few of them were dups (ahem, AMPA) which I have laboriously deleted down to their originals, but still a lively discussion on multiple fronts has obviously sprung back to life here.

I'm particularly pleased that the innie/outtie debate is not one of these. What a fun food fight we all had over at Salon! Now that it has finally wound down, though, it's great to have this place all to ourselves. (As always, current SY practitioners are welcome here. As always, none but the most intrepid seem to ever comment out of fear of being put on 'the list'. Who is left in SF to maintain said dreaded list is an open question! Nevertheless, it seems just us outties milling around here.)

There are several dominant themes that have emerged in the comments to the last post, and rather than reply to them there, I thought I'd tease two of these out further by making them the subject of a new post:

1. artsquiggle commented that his attention has turned from SY to his practical life which, partly as a result of his many years of practice, has been "left in shambles". Another reader seconded that emotion:

"My practical life went down the tubes. cannot get back those 25 + years of endless exhausting seva and every last nickel I had of dakshina spent while I should have been developing a career. The opprotunity cost of spending the most productive years of your life in Siddha Yoga, astronomical. Lately there are many anniversaries, retirements, celebrations of accomplishment to attend, not for me. I cringe to think of how with all the talent, energy I had when I came to Siddha Yoga in my early twenties, I managed to not establish myself securely. No, I burned it all up, flushed it down the toilet of a complete charade."

2. AMPA writes that his wife has fallen into a deep depression over G's disappearing act:

"My wife survives on my very sufficient income and other resources rather nicely. BUT, the survival of her SELF-IDENTITY is still utterly dependent on Siddha Yoga. Her despondency on the state of the "path" and the unavailability of Malti to her adoring devotees, makes her utterly, crushingly depressed. Everything has suffered as a result of it in our family life. She is often totally unclear in her thinking, her judgement and discernment are often utterly clouded, her ability to think sharply is now totally dulled and so is her former ability to get things done quickly. It's like she's moving in slow motion and I know it's only partially based on physical fatigue. The emotional fatigue and baggage Malti has left her with, is painfully sad to watch. I feel so good to be free of any dependency on the Guru anymore. And I watch her, in her despair, and it makes me despair for her."

These are both issues that all of us are dealing with in greater or lesser ways. For instance, I just applied for a job at a major non-profit and was asked to provide evidence of my prior volunteer commitments. How, I wondered, could I not list Siddha Yoga? I have literally spent years in 'selfless service' to the Guru and the path; my bona fides for giving back should be spotless. But, then again, how can I reference those years, what actual value did they have beyond enriching a fleecing charlatan now fled? Even if I bucked up and tried to spin that experience into something useful to humanity, who is around to verify all that work? Who could I possibly list as a contact? Of course, I have it relatively easy compared to many, many others; I held a job 'in-the-world' throughout my many years of practice. Those who were on the 'inside' and are now out face a much tougher dilemma since their primary experience of work--in what is rapidly being recognized as a cult--is in danger of being called into question.

Please, if you have made this transition from on-staff to in-the-world work, consider posting your experience here. Many people like Anon above are struggling to re-establish themselves in a tough job market, with little or no savings, and real questions about how to craft their 'seva' into relevant experience an employer will value. I think it is very important, as well, that we re-affirm for each other that what seems like wasted effort now was truly was truly important work to the community of believers at the time. None of the wonderful experiences we still cherish of our time in SY could have happened without the 'endless exhausting seva' of the ashram staff.

Finally, the issue of depression caused by the dissolution of belief in SY. Some of us, like AMPA, have loved ones who are still tenaciously clinging to belief despite the obvious (to us) slow-death of the Siddha path. But, as Older but Wiser observed, if we are honest with ourselves we've all gone through depression over the dying of what we thought was our light. I still struggle with it from time to time. There is no replacement for the feelings of certainty, security and absolute safety that a global belief system like Siddha Yoga provides. If we don't jump to another belief system, if we are now mostly allergic to belief systems, we're thrown back onto our own resources. We're left trusting in only ourselves during a time in life and in an economy when so much seems so precarious. It is scary. We need each other to get through this.

Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu

2010-09-27T13:02:00.006-04:00

An idol of Lord Ganesha is hoisted by a crane into Hussainsagar Lake in Hyderabad on September 22, 2010.

That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,
Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,
Just to stand still without moving a hand.

In a world without heaven to follow, the stops
Would be endings, more poignant than partings, profounder,
And that would be saying farewell, repeating farewell,
Just to be there and just to behold.

To be one's singular self, to despise
The being that yielded so little, acquired
So little, too little to care, to turn
To the ever-jubilant weather, to sip

One's cup and never to say a word,
Or to sleep or just to lie there still,
Just to be there, just to be beheld,
That would be bidding farewell, be bidding farewell.

One likes to practice the thing. They practice,
Enough, for heaven. Ever-jubilant,
What is there here but weather, what spirit
Have I except it comes from the sun?

--wallace stevens

When Kristians Attempt Kriyas

2010-09-23T12:39:00.005-04:00

The demon-obsessed members of a church in Texas prove you don't need shaktipat to shake, rattle and roll in worship. Go on and fast-forward through the thoroughly uninspiring woman screaming at the beginning of this clip; my fave part comes 48 seconds in when a man appears to be trying to vomit up the mother of all hairballs as his children sit bored-out-of-their-gourds alongside. And you thought YOU had it bad as a hall monitor:

Because We Finally Heard, Never More Another Word

2010-09-17T02:59:00.009-04:00

Since we are inventing letters from Gurumayi's pen, why not music videos from her playlist?

Because we all once loved each other so well.

Because we never will again.

Because it was all just smoke and shadows in the end.

Because. Because. Because. Because..

Comments Are Now Unmoderated on RoD

2010-08-29T13:03:00.004-04:00

Giving this a whirl, so let's try to play nice. Trolls will have their comments deleted and be banned from coming out from under their bridges ever again.

HOUSEKEEPING: Ignore Comments Too Large Warnings from Blogger

2010-08-26T11:24:00.004-04:00

I get these too when I comment, and I've learned to ignore them because my comments always go through in their entirety. Of course, I can check on that instantly, while you all have to wonder until I post your comment. So, wonder no more. It is a Blogger glitch and I am in contact with them to see if it somehow only affects RoD, or if it is part of a comprehensive "upgrade" that blogger recently made to tie it more tightly to evil Google.

So, no need to cut and paste and resubmit into several different comments. And there is certainly no need to edit yourself to avoid having your comment be "too big". This ain't the home of the 45 second experience share, folks. Have at it.

What We Who Have Left Would Ask of You Who Stay

2010-08-24T12:04:00.023-04:00

This is a letter I submitted to Salon this morning after they briefly re-opened submissions to the comments page of their article on Siddha Yoga. It has not gone up on the site; perhaps they are again monitoring new letters before posting them, given the huge number of submissions they have already published:

Siddha Yoga may be a house divided, but I still think there is a chance that those who left and those who have stayed can stake out some middle ground. It is in the best interest of both sides to do so. Many of us who have abandoned our practice still seek some kind of permanent closure to a chapter in our lives that ended as abruptly as it once began with the "big bang" of our shaktipat experience. And those who have remained are an embattled minority struggling with the same issues that caused the rest of us to leave--only they cannot talk freely and openly about their fears, doubts and questions, because of the culture of secrecy that surrounds everything having to do with the Siddha Guru.

What is needed is an honest, open dialogue minus the kind of invective that plagued many of the letters here (however slim the chance for that may be.) If we could all sit down and have that heart-to-heart, here are the hard questions I would ask of those who continue to practice.

The first big question I have is: how do you deal emotionally with the fact that Gurumayi has disappeared? She has not been seen in public since New Year's Day 2004--which is just a few months shy of the time required before a person is declared legally dead. In a spiritual path dedicated to the worship of the living perfected master (and whatever else Siddha Yoga is, it is certainly that) this is a crushing blow. Particularly given that the "official" position of the SYDA Foundation is to pretend this never happened. In this very article in Salon they write:

"For almost three decades, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, the spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga path, has guided students through her teachings."

This is a pretty piece of propaganda. Notice that they do not say Gurumayi is still in an active teaching role, rather, she guides "through her teachings." This kind of obfuscation is shameful, and you who remain faithful certainly deserve better. So, the second thing I would ask is:

How do you justify to yourself that SYDA refuses to explain where Gurumayi is, why she retired from an active role, and when, if ever, she will resume her role as Guru? Is it because you truly do find her guidance within in the form of the "inner Guru"? And has this need to accept her disappearance without any official explanation fueled your inner quest, strengthened your identification with the inner Guru, or does it ever rankle, does it ever make you question the path?

Finally, whenever SYDA is forced to address the question of the future of Siddha Yoga, it never, ever mentions Gurumayi. Instead, it performs a neat sleight of hand, inserting itself in place of the Guru with uninspiring formulations that only a lawyer could love, such as:

"The purpose of the SYDA Foundation is to protect, preserve and disseminate the teachings... for future generations."

Who are these future generations, and why do they take precedence over the current generation of young people who were orphaned by the Guru before they were old enough to understand that loss? You know, the teenagers and young adults who learned of the Guru from their mother's knees, who sat beside her chair during darshan, the fresh young faces whom Gurumayi once claimed she was concentrating on teaching? Do you remember when Gurumayi told us old-timers during her last Labor Day talk in Fallsburg that "your begging bowls are full" and it was now time to turn her attention to the next generation? Except that she didn't. Can you remember subsequent summers in South Fallsburg full of programs for young people, special Intensives held exclusively for the under 21 set, courses designed especially to help teenagers and young adults apprehend and communicate the teachings? No, of course not, because they never happened. Outside of a few satsangs that Gurumayi held for the children of ashram residents and, of course, a few treacly children's books and tapes, this new flowering of Siddha Yoga died on the vine.

I guess it all comes down to this: if your own children are growing up without the Siddha Guru, how do you imagine that future generations will be attracted to become her disciples?

Just Living is Enough

2010-08-23T12:50:00.004-04:00

NOTE: the following letter is from the Salon webpage dedicated to SYDA's response to the recent article on Gurumayi and Eat, Pray, Love. I'm reposting it here because as I read it, I wondered if maybe I had written it myself while sleepwalking, it so encapsulates my experience. Thank you, Lucid 2010 for so eloquently stating what so many of us have gone through, finally putting the path in our rear view mirrors.

just living is enough

I began my slow departure from SY the day after Gurumayi delivered her 2004 New Year’s address. My exit wasn’t dramatic and didn't occur overnight. It took years to become involved with SY and its taken years to move away. The fact that I’m reading and posting in forums like this tells me I’m still going through the process.

My main reason for leaving? The short answer is one day I finally felt strong enough to stop suppressing my intuition and listen to what the voice inside me had been trying to tell me for years: despite the wonders of the path and my largely positive experience, there was something sinister at SY's core.

I decided I no longer needed to know, see, or have some traumatic “direct experience” of what was rotten about SY. I decided it was more important to honor myself, my intuition and the voice I’d tried so hard to silence that kept telling me it was time to go.

It’s wrenching having to end your relationship with the ultimate parent, let alone discard your entire spiritual belief system. It is a death, to be sure. I was a shell for a year. But gradually I re-grew from the inside out and am back living comfortably in the world now, both feet on the ground.

It’s funny, “the world” was the term we used to use whenever we referred to anything outside of SY. All the mishaps and human foibles that occurred in “the world” provided Gurumayi with an endless stream of anecdotes for her talks. And we all laughed right along with her because we were all in on the joke. Though we did feel pity for all those poor souls out there who were still “asleep," we also knew we had been blessed. We were the lucky ones who understood the difference between life in “the world” and life with the guru. And in SY there was never any question about which was the better side to be on.

But, for all it’s horrors and yes, joys too, now I’m back out here I’m kinda digging it. My day-to-day existence is no longer dominated by some belief system I must incessantly adhere to in order to avoid dropping off into the abyss of delusion. The world isn’t a bubble that can be ruptured. The world isn’t a sets of beliefs that can be threatened by an article at a website, or shattered by some secret someone's hiding.

The world is too old and too big for all that.

Once I got some distance from my SY experience, and reached a middle point somewhere between true believer and total skeptic, the entire thing became far more fascinating to me than when I was involved. For me, the whole SY phenomenon is far more interesting when viewed from where I am today (halfway through my life, having traveled, worked for a cultish corporation or two, and become a parent) vs. where I was when I encountered SY (a depressed teenager, desperate for a “way out,” open to/with absolutely no frame of reference for anything).

When you are in SY you can spot others who have “met Gurumayi” (a designation, by the way, which doesn’t require having actaully met her in person). Today, although it’s rare when I run into someone I recognize from my SY days, I can always tell whether or not they’re still practicing. It’s a guru-dar that apparently continues working even after you become a non-believer. People who’ve practiced SY intensely long-term have those unmistakable “ashram eyes.” It’s a look that privately spooked me even when I was involved in SY, but back then I told myself everyone had their own personal relationship with the shakti – some more intense than others – and I tried not to judge.

But what I notice now when I encounter these people today is the disconnect. And I’m talking here about devotees who’ve spent 15+ years in SY, lived in ashram, done tons of seva. Devotees who’ve been through all the wars and still stayed committed. For all their dedication, to me, kind and thoughtful as may be, these people seem less “present” not more. Even when I was in SY, the hard-core “sevittes” as we called them, seemed to in no way emulate their guru. For reasons I could never find the answers to, her good qualities didn't seem to rub off on them. Gurumayi supposedly embodied ultimate example everyone was aiming for, yet the entire time I was in SY I never met any long-term devotee who was anything like her. (And by her, I mean Gurumayi’s public persona, which is all I ever saw, and all the positive attributes that came with it.)

It’s a challenge to have much of a conversation with anyone still in SY. Heck, it was a challenge when I was in SY, if the topic of conversation wasn't in some way related to Gurumayi. There is now of course the elephant in the room that they’re still in SY and I’m not – something neither side can speak about. But mainly, because we’re no longer both on the same path, there simply isn’t much to say.

I have no regrets whatsoever about my participation in SY. I had to learn what I had to learn and there are far worse things I could have done with my time.

Would I let my own child go anywhere near SY, or something like it today?

No way in hell.

I’ve not read all of “Eat, Pray, Love” and won’t see the movie. There was a time in my life I’d have been first in line for both but now I have no interest in either beyond the conversation that’s occurring here.

I don’t meditate, chant or pray anymore.

Just living is enough.

Why 'Eat, Pray, Love' means you'll never see Gurumayi again

2010-08-19T11:23:00.039-04:00

Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir Eat, Pray, Love is currently #1 on the New York Times non-fiction paperback best-seller list. It has been on top of the list for an astounding 183 weeks in a row. Last week the movie version starring America's sweetheart Julia Roberts opened in U.S. theatres, grossing nearly $30 million in its first four days alone. Eat, Pray, Love may have debuted in the number two slot at the box office behind Sylvester Stallone's Expendables, but it is doing very well for what is essentially a chick flick and industry experts predict it will gross well over $100 million dollars worldwide.

Of course, the "chick" of most interest to us in this flick is the guru whom Gilbert visits in India—the focus of the central "Pray" storyline. Gilbert never mentions her guru by name, but both the book and movie give enough identifying details to make plain that it is Gurumayi. As Riddhi Shah notes in the recent Salon article about Siddha Yoga's connection to the film, there are only so many female gurus in India who require daily chanting of the Guru Gita at their ashram in a small village outside of Mumbai. And who served as translator for their guru before ascending to the chair in their early twenties. It's not hard to do the math.

So, if Siddha Yoga and Gurumayi are the focus of the most successful publishing and movie phenomenon of the decade, why is the SYDA Foundation trying so hard to hide this fact? It's not as if Gilbert's account of her time in India is negative. Quite to the contrary, her glowingly positive experience has moved hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, awakening a hunger for authentic Eastern spirituality, Siddha Yoga style.

The first hint that SYDA was running from the connection between Gurumayi and Eat, Pray, Love came in a comment to this blog around the time of Gurumayi's birthday celebration this year. On June 25th, Anon wrote:

One writer...posted a Facebook greeting in celebration of 'the Birthday,' and referred in these offerings of love to 'the One I cannot name' (without the slightest touch of irony, Potter-wise). When asked to explain, the response was: 'Many of my Facebook friends are of a community that have the same Guru, and they lived in or visited the ashram I lived in for 20 years. Many of us have been asked by the Guru's foundation to not use her name, or the name of the path, in our own writings. It is a way of preserving the purity of the path, instead of letting it be seen or judged by what others say about it.'

Then, on August 8th, just in advance of Eat, Pray, Love's film release, SYDA issued a letter to the global sangham, stating in no uncertain terms that:

"The film is not a representation of the Siddha Yoga Path, and the SYDA Foundation has not been involved in the production of the film."

Why, you must be asking, would SYDA lie about something so simple to check? And why their insistence that current Siddha Yoga students maintain a vow of silence surrounding Gurumayi? The answers to both questions are simple, but you are not going to like them.

First, they are not lying: the account that Elizabeth Gilbert gave of Siddha Yoga does not represent the path as it is currently practiced. Her experience of a deep, personal soul connection with a living Guru may be achingly familiar to anyone who practiced Siddha Yoga under Baba or Gurumayi's tutelage during the 1970's, 80's or 90's--but those days are long gone and over for good. This is the inescapable meaning of SYDA's statement. It literally makes no sense otherwise. Gurumayi has not been seen in public since New Year's Day 2004--just four months shy of the time required before a person is declared legally dead. The physical Guru--who was the focus, the pole star, the living breathing center, the sine qua non of Siddha Yoga--is no more.

Which is why it makes all the sense in the world that SYDA would forbid Siddha Yoga students from reminiscing about the old days within earshot of a press and public newly eager to learn all about the path in the wake of Eat, Pray, Love. By throwing a veil of secrecy around Gurumayi under the pretense of protecting "the path" from the grubby attentions of outsiders, they are attempting to build a firewall around the past, cordoning and sealing it off from view. After all, nothing would be more inconvenient than for thousands and thousands of newcomers to arrive at the door of Siddha Yoga ashrams and centers around the world breathless for a glimpse of the living Guru when she is never coming back.

Think about it. During Siddha Yoga's expansionist phase under Gurumayi in the early 1990's every single devotee was urged, coached and prodded to share their experience of the path with family and friends. There was even a course dedicated solely to teaching people how to talk to their loved ones about Siddha Yoga. Major satellite Intensives sparked an international effort for Siddha Yoga students to reach out and enroll as many people as possible to come see the Guru, if not in person than via broadcast, and to receive Shaktipat initiation with just one touch, one look, one word from the living Guru. It was not only understood but taught that Siddha Yoga could only grow and fulfill its global mission person-to-person through heart to heart sharing.

But now that Gurumayi has gone missing, SYDA says that it is vitally important that Siddha Yoga students NOT share their experience of the path, going so far as to proscribe them from even using the names Gurumayi or Siddha Yoga in writing so as to preserve the purity of the path, instead of letting it be seen or judged by what others say about it.

You see, there must be a period of retrenchment and reversal, during which Siddha Yoga students are taught to NOT expect a relationship with the physical Guru, but to look for and find her in the teachings instead. This is the meaning behind SYDA's repeated insistence that its core purpose is to protect, preserve and disseminate the teachings for future generations. You only protect and preserve something that is finite in quantity--as in the past speeches and writings of Gurumayi and Baba, because there will not be anymore.

It is the SYDA Foundation that owns the copyright to all the countless hours of audio and video talks, all of Baba's and Gurumayi's books and writings. Siddha Yoga has become a legal fiction. Gurumayi has left the building. The Guru/Disciple relationship is dead. Only SYDA survives and it is doing nothing more than protecting its investment with these stilted, legalese announcements.

But it gets worse. While SYDA may have survived Gurumayi's unspoken abdication, it has no real hope of attracting new students to such a moribund and depressingly circumscribed path. If it did, it would have done everything in its power to capitalize on the Eat, Pray, Love juggernaut. One could imagine SYDA mounting an outreach effort that honestly stated Gurumayi has retired from an active role, but that invited new students to find her in the immutable, ancient teachings of the path. Ah, but there's the rub. The sole thing that made Siddha Yoga unique was not its mediation techniques, or chanting in sanskrit, or its gloss on Kashmir Shaivism (which is taught all over India) but its teachings on the seeker's inescapable need for a living, powerful, charismatic Guru. Like the one Elizabeth Gilbert met once upon a time and wrote so movingly of in her experience share par excellence--Eat, Pray, Love.

Listen. If you are still heroically practicing Siddha Yoga in the absence of its defining "Siddha Guru" you are being cynically exploited by SYDA. The Foundation has become a parasite that feeds off of your love, money and hard work and offers nothing in return but warnings to keep silent about your experiences lest you spoil "the purity of the path," and the empty promise of extending the teachings to future generations---the same teachings that are belied by the ghosts of Gurus past.

RoD is offering $1,000 for written evidence of Gurumayi's whereabouts

2010-08-18T16:25:00.027-04:00

If you go online and read the SYDA Foundation's response to the Salon article on Gurumayi and Siddha Yoga, you'll doubtless notice that the Trustees have organized a letter writing campaign by their inner circle to flood the comments page with positive testimonials. But, regardless of how many lovely stories they share about the wondrous impact Siddha Yoga has had on their lives, one thing is missing from every one of these letters.

No one has claimed to have seen Gurumayi in years.

As always, SYDA speaks out of both sides of its mouth. Currently, its obsessively repeated talking point is that "the Siddha Yoga Foundation's main purpose is to disseminate Siddha Yoga teachings." After decades of promoting the most slavish (and ultra lucrative) worship of the physical Guru in the persons of Muktananda and Gurumayi, SYDA would now like you to believe that the Guru equals the teachings, nothing more.

Of course, what is left unsaid is that THE main teaching of Siddha Yoga is the absolute necessity of the aspirant to forge a personal relationship with the Siddha Guru in order to attain liberation--the goal of all spiritual seeking.

It's a neat sleight of hand, designed to distract the eye from the terrible paradox that Siddha Yoga has become: Siddha Yoga teaches that you need the physical Guru to attain enlightenment; the Guru is no longer physically present but always available to students in the form of her teachings; the teachings state that the student needs the physical Guru.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

What is particularly cruel about this shell game is how dismissive it is to those who are still trying to practice Siddha Yoga. The comments on this blog alone are rife with the pain of those who cling to the practices, enduring empty satsangs at their local centers, canned New Year's "teachings" that repeat verbatim year after year with depressing monotony, expensive Intensives that are dry of Shakti and conducted by exhausted swamis who run from the attendees lest they be asked yet again for any news of Gurumayi's whereabouts. And, after putting up with all this, and still remaining attached (in a now wholly-inconvenient parlance) to the Guru's feet, these seekers have to listen to SYDA insisting that "for almost three decades, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, the spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga path, has guided students through her teachings."

Well, it's time to put up or shut up, SYDA. I promise to write a check in the amount of $1,000 to the Foundation if it can produce one written piece of evidence that Gurumayi is still actively teaching. One invitation to an open public program in which Gurumayi (and not her disembodied, pre-recorded voice) has actually appeared and spoken in the past year. Not a private gathering for a few rich devotees who paid exorbitant amounts for a chance to coax Gurumayi back into her saffron robes for a few hours. A program open to your rank and file Siddha Yoga students.

Just one. Your move.

Salon: SYDA's response

2010-08-18T13:16:00.004-04:00

From online magazine Salon: the original can be found here:

http://letters.salon.com/mwt/feature/2010/08/16/sya_response_to_eat_pray_love_story/view/index11.html?show=all

The SYDA Foundation Board of Trustees emphatically rejects the grossly false picture drawn by Salon.com magazine in its recent article about Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Swami Muktananda, and the Siddha Yoga path. The Siddha Yoga path is an authentic path of self-knowledge and thousands of Siddha Yoga students can attest to the beneficial effect it has on their lives. For almost three decades, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, the spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga path, has guided students through her teachings.

The purpose of the SYDA Foundation is to disseminate the Siddha Yoga teachings. The SYDA Foundation does not engage in activities unrelated to its purpose and has done nothing whatsoever to capitalize on the film or the book "Eat, Pray, Love."

Tens of thousands of people around the world have chosen Siddha Yoga as their spiritual path. Over time, some people have decided not to continue on this path. A few of these former practitioners have become critics. Salon.com and writer Riddhi Shah chose to focus on a handful of critics rather than the thousands of Siddha Yoga practitioners who are living active and productive lives in their communities.

Shah relies heavily on what she herself acknowledges as rumors and accusations from articles written in 1983 and 1994. She then insinuates there is currency to those claims by falsely stating that Gurumayi disappeared from public view amid the allegations. In fact, Gurumayi actively continues to teach and guide Siddha Yoga students from all parts of the world.

It is unfortunate that the writer has used the release of the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" in an attempt to discredit a path that has enriched the lives of so many.

Salon: The Eat, Pray, Love Guru's Troubling Past

2010-08-18T13:14:00.004-04:00

From the online magazine Salon. The original can be read here:

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2010/08/14/eat_pray_love_guru_sex_scandals/index.html

When audiences go to "Eat, Pray, Love" this weekend, they will watch as Julia Roberts, blond and brokenhearted, folds her long, long legs into a perfect letter X, chants a mysterious mantra, and magically finds the equanimity that has been eluding her. Viewers will see her undergo life-changing experiences thanks to her guru's grace and the spirit of her guru's master, a man she calls a "South Indian old lion." They will perhaps be awed and enchanted by the exotic spiritual treasure chest that is India. And then they will cheer for her as she finally mends the cracks in her heart and makes her way to Bali to find love.

What they probably won't know is that the unnamed guru is a hugely controversial figure who has disappeared from public view amid allegations of manipulation, financial misconduct and intimidation. And as that guru's organization, the Siddha Yoga Dham of America (SYDA), has come under fire, her own guru (yes, gurus also have gurus), the "old lion," has been accused of sexual abuse, molestation and sexual intercourse with minor girls.

The film, like the Elizabeth Gilbert memoir on which it is based, doesn't name the real-life ashram or guru, and Gilbert has never revealed the guru's identity. Readers of the book are instead treated to breathless but abstract passages like this: "Then I listened to the Guru speak in person for the first time, and her words gave me chill bumps all over my whole body, even across the skin of my face. And when I heard she had an Ashram in India, I knew I must take myself there as quickly as possible."

But if you’re somewhat familiar with India’s spiritual landscape, it’s easy to figure out that this "feminine, multilingual, university-educated" guru is Gurumayi Chidvilasananda — the head of the SYDA. For starters, India doesn’t have very many female gurus, and fewer still that speak impeccable English and reside in the United States. Gilbert also dedicates a sizable chunk of the India portion of her book to the troubles she has with the "Gurugita," an obscure 90-minute-long hymn that Gurumayi's devotees are required to chant every morning. Having been to a Siddha Yoga meditation workshop myself, I’m well acquainted with the tedium that is the Gurugita, and as far as I know, Siddha Yoga is the only Hindu spiritual order to have made the Gurugita such an essential part of a devotee's daily practice. The ashram in the book is located in a small village just outside Mumbai, while SYDA's India ashram is tucked away in a rural idyll called Ganeshpuri, some 50 miles from Mumbai. The book is littered with other telling biographical details about Gilbert's guru that match up with Gurumayi — that she joined the entourage of an Indian swami (a Hindu religious teacher) as a teenager, that she served him as a translator for years before being given guru-hood, and that she was only in her 20s when she became his successor. Earlier this week, the New York Post drew the same SYDA connection to "EPL," as others have. When Salon contacted Gilbert's publicist at Viking to confirm that Gurumayi was in fact her guru, we were told, "No comment. Liz has always made a concerted effort to respect the privacy of the ashram." But the evidence is overwhelming.

Known to her followers as just Gurumayi, Malti Shetty is undeniably beautiful — slender and brown-eyed, with dimples that dig deep commas below her high cheekbones. Shetty says she is the sole successor to SYDA, a new Hindu religious movement that is based on the tradition of Vedanta. Her predecessor and guru, the man who appointed her to his throne, is Swami Muktananda.

SYDA is headquartered in a large complex in South Fallsburg, N.Y., a town set in the Catskill Mountains. In the 1980s and '90s — the decades during which the SYDA reached its height of popularity — the foundation was said to have some 70,000 followers across the world. Its devotees, mostly the wealthy and well-educated, included celebrities like Melanie Griffith, Isabella Rossellini, Diana Ross and Don Johnson.

In 1983, an exposé by journalist William Rodarmor in CoEvolution Quarterly (a Stewart Brand magazine that eventually became Whole Earth Review) suggested that before his death, Muktananda had been having sex with several young girls in his ashrams. The septuagenarian guru, said the piece, used to stand behind a curtain and spy on girls in the female dormitory. He even had a special area equipped with a gynecologist's table that was used for his sexual dalliances. In public, he announced that he was celibate, insisting that sexual acts took away from spiritual energy. But in private, a parade of girls would be trooping in and out of his bedroom all night. The story even describes the violence and intimidation used by Muktananda to control his devotees. There are accounts of him beating hapless Indian peasants outside the ashram grounds, of stabbing his valet with a fork, and of sending burly enforcers to take care of devotees who refused to toe the party line.

In an account posted on the website Leaving Siddha Yoga — which encourages former devotees to come forward with stories of their abuse and mistreatment — a former devotee, Joan "Radha" Bridges, describes her sexual encounters with Muktananda. Bridges, then 26, says she was slowly wooed by Muktananda's translator, Malti Shetty. As the account reads: "I was given an invitation by Malti to come to the Boston Ashram with a small entourage. This was a privilege — I was thrilled to be included." Soon, Muktananda started kissing her and grabbing her breasts, eventually pulling her into his room to inspect her vagina. The next night, she says, Muktananda brought her back into his quarters. "All the while he told me, 'Don't tell anyone,' and, 'Don't tell your husband.' Muktananda put me on a high table, pulled my legs back to expose my vagina and pulled out his flaccid penis. He placed his penis as far up inside me as he could and remained in that position a very long time." It took years for her to accept that she had, in fact, been a victim of sexual abuse.

In 1994, the New Yorker revisited these accusations in the article "O Guru, Guru, Guru," written by Lis Harris. Harris found several other women who said that Muktananda had forced them to have sex with him. But she also chronicled Shetty's behavior as the new guru. Shetty displayed many of the same traits as her mentor. She ran a hate campaign against her brother, who had been named as a co-successor by Muktananda, beating him and isolating him until he finally gave up his claim on the SYDA's spiritual mantle. She denied all allegations of Muktananda's sexual abuse and shielded other sexual predators inside the ashram, including a man called George Afif, who was convicted of statutory rape. Harris' piece even hinted that Shetty herself had had sexual relations with Afif. "While I was working on the story," Harris told Salon, "I was constantly followed [inside the ashram]. Men with walkie-talkies wouldn't let me go anywhere on my own. They were always asking my driver questions. A woman who I worked with in the ashram's kitchen was even noting down every word I said. It was very Big Brother-like."

The organization tried hard to keep the New Yorker from publishing the story, even threatening it with litigation. According to Marta Szabo, a one-time devotee of SYDA who wrote the book "The Guru Looked Good," Shetty once called a secret meeting to chant and perform "weird Reiki" against Lis Harris and the New Yorker's then-editor, Tina Brown. "When the article finally came out, they took every copy of the magazine that they could find and burnt them in a great pile," Harris says.

Rumors also abound of untold millions stashed away in Swiss bank accounts. (Rodarmor's exposé features Muktananda talking about just such a thing.) The foundation's workshop fees run into hundreds of dollars, and devotees who work at the ashram are mostly unpaid. "Just the money I collected from a single intensive [meditation workshop] amounted to $14,000," says Szabo.Daniel Shaw, a former devotee who now runs Leaving Siddha Yoga, says that using human conduits to ferry cash from the U.S. to India was a common practice within Siddha Yoga. "I've been asked to carry large amounts of cash under my clothes during several trips to India. Others used to carry jewelry," he says.

Charges have never been pressed against the organization. Shetty stopped speaking to the press soon after she became Gurumayi and has not publicly addressed any of the accusations in a long time. But when Rodarmor spoke to her for his piece in 1983 — just after she had taken on the mantle of guru-hood — she denied all allegations of sexual abuse against Muktananda and of the existence of Swiss bank accounts. In Harris' piece, the group's swamis (high-ranking members) steadfastly maintained that Muktananda never broke his vows of celibacy. The SYDA did not respond to Salon's request for a comment.

SYDA is now a shell of its former mid-'90s self, despite the bestseller and newfangled Hollywood associations. The South Fallsburg ashram, which once hummed with as many as 4,000 devotees, looks forlorn. Many defectors say that they left because of Shetty's increasingly authoritarian behavior and her subtle attempts at control and manipulation. "She was just mean. She humiliated me in public. She certainly wasn't enlightened," says Szabo, who was once part of a team that edited and rewrote parts of the public talks for which Shetty was revered.

In 2004, presumably about a year after her encounter with Gilbert (whose book came out in 2006), Shetty disappeared from public life. Now followers only get an occasional video message from their master. Shaw believes that the appearance of websites like Leaving Siddha Yoga caused Shetty to retreat into a world where she has full control. Others say that she's just tired of playing guru.

It's anyone's guess if "EPL's" film release will cause a renewed surge in SYDA's membership. Or if a new wave of popularity will force Shetty to come back into public view. But Gilbert's account of her time in India, her naive view of her guru as a "compassionate, loving" and "enlightened" master, and her faith that Muktananda was a "world-changing" and "self-realized" leader are all a sad chronicle of the human need to find spiritual anchors, and then to believe that these ordinary, and often deeply flawed, men and women are the path to our salvation.

Your Trusty Trustee-to-English Translation

2010-08-17T00:08:00.015-04:00

Warm greetings and salutations to you, yogi or yogini, on behalf of The SYDA Foundation Board of Trustees. My name is Fernando Del Cant and as junior member of the Board it is my sad duty to have to deal with the following situation.

I am writing to respond to inquiries that The SYDA Foundation has received regarding an upcoming movie, Eat, Pray, Love. I am told this film is based on a book of the same title and includes an account of one woman's alleged spiritual retreat in India. A number of people have asked if The SYDA Foundation is aware of this film and if the film represents the Siddha Yoga path.

First, let me say that of course we are aware of the film. The SYDA Foundation is aware of many things most things everything. Allow me to share with you the perspective of The SYDA Foundation regarding this film. It is NOT a representation of the Siddha Yoga path. Now, some people may say but I saw Elizabeth Gilbert at South Fallsburgh and I know for a fact that she traveled to Ganeshpuri to be with Gurumayi, she was one of us, a devotee, what do you mean the book and film about her Guru don't portray Siddha Yoga? To those people I say YES! Yes, the book and movie do not represent the path. Also, The SYDA Foundation was not involved in the production of this film. We weren't even brought on as technical consultants, for Christ's sake.

Not that any of that matters. The core purpose of The SYDA Foundation is to Protect, Preserve and Disseminate the Siddha Yoga teachings! And to insure that the Siddha Yoga path is maintained as An Enduring Legacy for students Now and For Generations to Come, Amen. This is our focus our bread and butter our get-that-bitch-back scheme for leaving us in the lurch.

When Gilbert first wrote her book we hit her with a cease and desist order designed to lock her lips in full-lotus permanently unless SYDA got a cut of the action. And it worked, for awhile. But once she brought in the Hollywood guns I guess all bets were off. Those fockers don't freak around, they're freakin SCIENTOLOGISTS! We got served with papers that threatened to, well, legally I'm not allowed to discuss specifics but let's just say that waking up as a demon in a waterless place would have been an ESCAPE from what those papers promised.

So. To reiterate. The SYDA Foundation does not participate in activities that are unrelated to its core purpose as stated above. The SYDA Foundation does not seek publicity or...wait a sec, checking papers for exact wording here...gain from commercial ventures such as the film Eat, Pray, Love.

If friends or relatives would like to learn about the Siddha Yoga path and its teach...oh, what's the use. We're the focus of the biggest Hollywood phenomenon in decades and we can't even talk about it. This sucks.

And the Trustees Sputter to Life Once More

2010-08-17T00:01:00.004-04:00

as always, click on image to embiggen

Has Someone Stolen That Ego You Were So Desperate To Lose?

2010-06-29T10:55:00.007-04:00

From the Better Late Than Never Department comes this news that hackers breached the firewall of the SYDA bookstore accounts and stole an undetermined number of credit card numbers and their associated financial data. You can view the DataLoss report on the incident here (cut and paste url into your address bar):

http://datalossdb.org/incidents/2402-website-hack-provides-unauthorised-access-to-credit-card-information

Interesting how SYDA does not give a date when the incident occured. However, they let SIX WEEKS pass in between the time they discovered the hack (Jan 4, 2008) and the day they finally reported it to the authorities (February 21, 2008). Let's chalk that up to 2 weeks of incompetence and 4 weeks of attempted cover up.

None of the lost data has ever been recovered, no arrests have been made and--as of yet--no lawsuits have been filed in connection with this breach of security, according to the report.

So, if you suffered any financial/credit card related fraud issues in Jan/Feb of 2008, and you purchased anything from the crookstore via credit card at any time in the past, I'd start looking for a link if I were you. Because I can't believe SYDA would not be liable for allowing your personal financial info to sit in the hands of identity fraudsters for 6 weeks without doing anything about it.

SYDA's belated filings, including names and contact information of SYDA General Counsel Ken Braziller, and SYDA Board of Trustees Officer Joseph Buga can be found in the PDF docs embedded within the above website page.

PRICELESS!

2010-06-23T17:50:00.004-04:00

Found this question and answer(!) posted on WikiAnswers today:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_is_Gurumayi_Chidvilasananda

The accompanying reply on the discussion page is the best---you just know that QueensLadyDay MUST be the online handle of a SYDA lawyer with no kids!

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Discuss:Where_is_Gurumayi_Chidvilasananda

Happy Birthday Celebration! "some restrictions apply"

2010-06-23T11:26:00.020-04:00

In celebration of Birthday Bliss®, one of the gifts you are invited to prepare-to-be-unwrapped* during the Celebration Satsang™ is a share©. To prepare, compose a share® that you can give in 45 seconds or less** about one of the following topics†:

One way that the Purpose Statement™ has inspired you to celebrate Gurumayi's Birthday™.

An experience of AUM sadhana© from your study and practice of the Siddha Yoga Message© given to us by Gurumayi™®.

Another favorite teaching from Gurumayi™® that you are applying in your life.

An anecdote or experience of being with Gurumayi™® - your own or one you've heard and love††.

With Love,
Your Local Steering Committee

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* To show proper honor and respect for this auspicious day, please wrap all gifts in organically dyed rice paper or Japanese silk (of no less than 12" square). Offerings of flowers will be accepted at the Guru's Chair® during darshan™ so long as they are not geraniums, and have not been smelled by any living person prior to being offered.

** Sharers who exceed this generous time limit will be gently led to sit back down via the tinkling of silver bells. Sharers who do not obey the bells and instead attempt to "wrap up their thoughts" will be greeted with a brass gong reminder and the good natured laughter of their peers.

† Please limit the contemplation of your infinite gratitude to the Guru to approved topics only. Those whose remarks veer off-topic will forfeit all opportunity to share until Gurumayi™® gives her next new year's address in person, or until their death, whichever comes first.

†† Those who have never had the infinite pleasure of meeting or even seeing Gurumayi™® in person are required to meet with one of the roaming "share coaches" in the hall before the program begins, to insure that the second-or -third-hand memory they are sharing conforms fully to all official photographic, video, audio and textual messages of the Guru as established and incorporated by the trustees of the Siddha Yoga Dham of America. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, or otherwise persecuted should the law not apply.

So you want to marry your snake

2010-06-04T15:39:00.001-04:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Marrying Snakes

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

Parallels in Snake Oil Salesmanship

2010-06-04T14:52:00.018-04:00

Click on each page individually to enlarge for reading
(those whose reading skills have been atrophied by Facebook and Twitter
may want to skip to page number 46 below, wherein we first meet "Guru Ma")

Parallels in Red

2010-03-07T18:33:00.001-05:00

March 6, 2010

Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.

“Why did we work so hard for this organization,” Ms. Collbran said, “and why did it feel so wrong in the end? We just didn’t understand.”

They soon discovered others who felt the same. Searching for Web sites about Scientology that are not sponsored by the church (an activity prohibited when they were in the Sea Org), they discovered that hundreds of other Scientologists were also defecting — including high-ranking executives who had served for decades.

Fifty-six years after its founding by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, the church is fighting off calls by former members for a Reformation. The defectors say Sea Org members were repeatedly beaten by the church’s chairman, David Miscavige, often during planning meetings; pressured to have abortions; forced to work without sleep on little pay; and held incommunicado if they wanted to leave. The church says the defectors are lying.

The defectors say that the average Scientology member, known in the church as a public, is largely unaware of the abusive environment experienced by staff members. The church works hard to cultivate public members — especially celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Nancy Cartwright (the voice of the cartoon scoundrel Bart Simpson) — whose money keeps it running.

But recently even some celebrities have begun to abandon the church, the most prominent of whom is the director and screenwriter Paul Haggis, who won Oscars for “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash.” Mr. Haggis had been a member for 35 years. His resignation letter, leaked to a defectors’ Web site, recounted his indignation as he came to believe that the defectors’ accusations must be true.

“These were not the claims made by ‘outsiders’ looking to dig up dirt against us,” Mr. Haggis wrote. “These accusations were made by top international executives who had devoted most of their lives to the church.”

The church has responded to the bad publicity by denying the accusations and calling attention to a worldwide building campaign that showcases its wealth and industriousness. Last year, it built or renovated opulent Scientology churches, which it calls Ideal Orgs, in Rome; Malmo, Sweden; Dallas; Nashville; and Washington. And at its base here on the Gulf Coast of Florida, it continued buying hotels and office buildings (54 in all) and constructing a 380,000-square-foot mecca that looks like a convention center.

“This is a representation of our success,” said the church’s spokesman, Tommy Davis, showing off the building’s cavernous atrium, still to be clad in Italian marble, at the climax of a daylong tour of the church’s Clearwater empire. “This is a result of our expansion. It’s pinch-yourself material.”

As for the defectors, Mr. Davis called them “apostates” and said that contrary to their claims of having left the church in protest, they were expelled.

“And since they’re removed, the church is expanding like never before,” said Mr. Davis, a second-generation Scientologist whose mother is the actress Anne Archer. “And what we see here is evidence of the fact that we’re definitely better off without them.”

‘Bridge to Total Freedom’

Scientology is an esoteric religion in which the faith is revealed gradually to those who invest their time and money to master Mr. Hubbard’s teachings. Scientologists believe that human beings are impeded by negative memories from past lives, and that by applying Mr. Hubbard’s “technology,” they can reach a state known as clear.

They may spend hundreds of hours in one-on-one “auditing” sessions, holding the slim silver-colored handles of an e-meter while an auditor asks them questions and takes notes on what they say and on the e-meter’s readings.

By doing enough auditing, taking courses and studying Mr. Hubbard’s books and lectures — for which some Scientologists say they have paid as much as $1 million — Scientologists believe that they can proceed up the “bridge to total freedom” and live to their full abilities as Operating Thetans, pure spirits. They do believe in God, or a Supreme Being that is associated with infinite potential.

Ms. Collbran, who is 33, said she loved the church so much that she never thought she would leave. Her parents were dedicated church members in Los Angeles, and she attended full-time Scientology schools for several years. When she was 8 or 9, she took the basic communications course, which teaches techniques for persuasive public speaking and improving self-confidence and has served as a major recruiting tool.

By 10, Ms. Collbran had completed the Purification Rundown, a regimen that involves taking vitamins and sitting in a sauna (a fixture inside every Scientology church) for as much as five hours a day, for weeks at a time, to cleanse the body of toxins.

By 16, she was recruited into the Sea Org, so named because it once operated from ships, wearing a Navy-like uniform with epaulets on the shoulders for work. She fully believed in the mission: to “clear the planet” of negative influences by bringing Scientology to its inhabitants. Her mindset then, Ms. Collbran said, was: “This planet needs our help, and people are suffering. And we have the answers.”

Christie and Chris Collbran were married in a simple ceremony at the Scientology center in Manhattan. Although she and her parents were very close, she said they had spent so much to advance up the bridge that they could not afford to attend the wedding.

It was in Johannesburg, where the couple had gone to supervise the building of a new Scientology organization, that Mr. Collbran, who is 29, began to have doubts. He had spent months at church headquarters in Clearwater revising the design for the Johannesburg site to meet Mr. Miscavige’s demands.

Mr. Collbran said he saw an officer hit a subordinate, and soon found that the atmosphere of supervision through intimidation was affecting him. He acknowledges that he pushed a 17-year-old staff member against a wall and yelled at his wife, who was his deputy.

In Johannesburg, officials made the church look busy for publicity photographs by filling it with Sea Org members, the Collbrans said. To make their numbers look good for headquarters, South African parishioners took their maids and gardeners to church.

But the Ideal Orgs are supposed to be self-supporting, and the Johannesburg church was generating only enough to pay each of the Collbrans $17 a week, Mr. Collbran said.

“It was all built on lies,” Mr. Collbran said. “We’re working 16 hours a day trying to save the planet, and the church is shrinking.”

‘It’s Everything You Know’

The church is vague about its membership numbers. In 11 hours with a reporter over two days, Mr. Davis, the church’s spokesman, gave the numbers of Sea Org members (8,000), of Scientologists in the Tampa-Clearwater area (12,000) and of L. Ron Hubbard’s books printed in the last two and a half years (67 million). But asked about the church’s membership, Mr. Davis said, “I couldn’t tell you an exact figure, but it’s certainly, it’s most definitely in the millions in the U.S. and millions abroad.”

He said he did not know how to account for the findings in the American Religious Identification Survey that the number of Scientologists in the United States fell from 55,000 in 2001 to 25,000 in 2008.

Marty Rathbun, who was once Mr. Miscavige’s top lieutenant, is now one of the church’s top detractors. The churches used to be busy places where members socialized and invited curious visitors to give Scientology a try, he said, but now the church is installing touch-screen displays so it can introduce visitors to Scientology with little need for Scientologists on site.

“That’s the difference between the old Scientology and the new: the brave new Scientology is all these beautiful buildings and real estate and no people,” said Mr. Rathbun, who is among several former top executives quoted by The St. Petersburg Times in a series of articles last year about the church’s reported mistreatment of staff members.

When Mr. Collbran decided he wanted to leave the Sea Org, he was sent to Los Angeles, where potential defectors are assigned to do menial labor while they reconsider their decision. Ms. Collbran remained in Johannesburg, and for three months the church refused to allow them to contact each other, the Collbrans said.

Letters they wrote to each other were intercepted, they said. Finally, Ms. Collbran was permitted to go to Los Angeles, but husband and wife were kept separated for another three months, the Collbrans said, while they went through hours of special auditing sessions called “confessionals.” The auditors tried to talk them out of leaving, and the Collbrans wavered.

They could not just up and go. For one, they said, the church had taken their passports. But even more important, they knew that if they left the Sea Org without going through the church’s official exit process, they would be declared “suppressive persons” — antisocial enemies of Scientology. They would lose the possibility of living for eternity. Their parents, siblings and friends who are Scientologists would have to disconnect completely from them, or risk being declared suppressive themselves.

“You’re in fear,” Mr. Collbran said. “You’re so into it, it’s everything you know: your family, your eternity.”

Mike Rinder, who for more than 20 years was the church’s spokesman, said the disconnect policy originated as Mr. Hubbard’s prescription for how to deal with an abusive spouse or boss.

Now, “disconnection has become a way of controlling people,” said Mr. Rinder, who says his mother, sister, brother, daughter and son disconnected from him after he left the church. “It is very, very prevalent.”

Mr. Davis, the church’s current spokesman, said Scientologists are no different from Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Amish who practice shunning or excommunication.

“These are common religious tenets,” he said. “The very survival of a religion is contingent on its protecting itself.”

The Collbrans went back to work for the church in Los Angeles, but Ms. Collbran found the atmosphere so oppressive, the staff members so miserable, that she likened it to living under “martial law” and again resolved to leave.

So she intentionally conceived a child. She knew that the Sea Org did not allow its members to have children, and she had known women who were removed when they refused to have abortions. She waited until her pregnancy had almost reached the end of the first trimester to inform her superiors. It still took two months before the church let the Collbrans go, in 2006, and not before making them sign affidavits.

“All of the auditing that you do, there’s files kept on it,” Ms. Collbran said. “All of the personal things you ever said, all the secrets, the transgressions, are all kept in there. They went through that file, wrote this affidavit as if I wrote it — and I never wrote this affidavit, the church wrote it — and made me sign it.”

They were also handed what the church calls a “freeloader bill” for services rendered, of $90,000, which they later negotiated down to $10,000 for Ms. Collbran’s portion and paid. They now had a child and no money, but they thought they were still in good standing with their church.

Mr. Davis, the church spokesman, said the Collbrans’ exit was not unusual. The Sea Org is a religious order that requires enormous dedication, he said, and leaving any religious order can be a lengthy process. He said the church does require departing staff members to pay freeloader bills and to sign affidavits drawn up by church officials, but he contends that the affidavits never contain confidential information drawn from auditing sessions.

“We have never violated that trust,” Mr. Davis said. “We never have. We never will.” The church in Johannesburg is thriving now that the Collbrans have left, Mr. Davis said.

‘Suppressive Persons’

In 2008, organizers with the Internet-based group Anonymous began waves of protests outside Scientology churches in many countries. Anonymous said it was protesting the Church of Scientology’s attempts to censor Internet posts of material the church considered proprietary — including a video of Tom Cruise, an ardent Scientologist, that was created for a church event but was leaked and posted on YouTube.

“Since Anonymous has come forward,” said Marc Headley, who belonged to the Sea Org for 16 years, “more and more people who have been abused or assaulted are feeling more confident that they can speak out and not have any retaliation happen.”

Mr. Headley, who wrote a book about his experiences, is suing the church for back wages, saying that over 15 years his salary averaged out to 39 cents an hour. His wife, who said the church coerced her into having two abortions, has also filed a suit. The couple now have two small children.

The church acknowledges that Sea Org members are not allowed to have babies, but denies that it pressures people into having abortions. On the pay issue, it says that Sea Org members expect to sacrifice their material well-being to devote their lives to the church.

Scientology parishioners interviewed in Clearwater seemed unperturbed by the protests, headlines and lawsuits.

Joanie Sigal is a 36-year parishioner in Clearwater who promotes the church’s antidrug campaign to local officials. She said the defectors’ stories were like what you would hear “if I asked your ex-husband what he thought of you.”

“It’s so not news,” she said. “It’s a big yawn, actually.”

The Collbrans, despite their efforts to remain in good standing in the church, were declared suppressive persons last year. The church discovered that Mr. Collbran had traveled to Texas to talk with Mr. Rathbun, the defector who runs a Web site that has become an online community for what he calls “independent Scientologists.”

The church immediately sent emissaries to Ms. Collbran’s parents’ house in Los Angeles to inform them that their daughter was “suppressive,” Ms. Collbran said. They have refused to speak to her ever since. Recently, Ms. Collbran received an e-mail message from her mother calling her a “snake in the grass.”

Ms. Collbran says she still believes in Scientology — not in the church as it is now constituted, but in its teachings. She still gets auditing, from other Scientologists who have defected, like Mr. Rathbun.

Mr. Davis said there is no such thing: “One can’t be a Scientologist and not be part of the church.”

Mr. Collbran, for his part, wants nothing to do with his former church. “Eventually I realized I was part of a con,” he said, “and I have to leave it and get on with my life.”

Despite all they have been through together, Ms. and Mr. Collbran are getting a divorce. The reason, they agree sadly, is that they no longer see eye to eye on Scientology.

Thank You, Gurumayi!

2010-02-16T18:09:00.010-05:00

Dearest Gurumayi:

I've wanted to write to you for so long, but was waiting until I had resolved everything I wanted to say and found a way to express it all perfectly. That day, however, is too long coming. Let me begin instead by writing the one thing that I never thought I would have the opportunity to say again:

Thank you, thank you, Gurumayi.

Thank you for countless hours spent in the deep, vast ruby mine of meditation.

Thank you for the experience of losing myself in meditation, and of finding myself again when I returned to 'reality'.

Thank you for the gift of contemplation that has shone healing light and understanding on so many obscured, forgotten corners of my soul.

Thank you for the broad, ever-changing river of chanting—now flowing slowly, almost indolently, now rushing forward in swift, powerful rapids, now plunging headlong over a cataract to resolve itself in a deep pool of stillness again.

Thank you for gathering a sangham of exceptional seekers to you, among whom have been the most generous, magnanimous, pure-hearted people I've ever had the privilege to know and love.

Thank you for giving us your beauty and your youth. These things should not matter on the path, and figure nowhere in the qualities of a true Guru, but were nonetheless treasures that we loved to turn over and over in our hands, like a mala made of the rarest flower buds.

Thank you for your voice, your gorgeous deep-throated silken voice that could caress us so softly even as it wounded, like dark velvet drawn across a bruise.

Thank you for the deep black pools of your eyes; how many times did each of us rise from darshan having been transfixed by one of your fathomless glances, certain that our life had meaning and purpose in your service?

Thank you for the mantra, that mysterious talisman that accompanied us wherever we might go, protecting, nurturing fostering our identification with you and with the Self.

Thank you for faithfully transmitting Baba's teaching that we See God in One Another—which alone gives me the courage to say:

Thank you for having the strength to leave.

Because, while all of the above experiences were real and true, your absence has exposed the shadow side of this yoga that we loved and willed into existence together:

The mendacity of SYDA trustees who cared more about currying your favor while you were still in the chair than giving you honest advice about how to best handle a growing multi-national spiritual enterprise, and so contributed to its downfall.

The fear and greed of these same trustees who now think only of stringing us remaining seekers along with hollow spiritual exercises that do little more than punctuate their constant appeals for more money.

The betrayal of so many, many of your most faithful devotees who gave years of their life in selfless service without a penny put into Social Security, and now are left without even the consolation of believing that you cared, that it mattered, that it wasn't all in support of a corrupt system that ensnared even you.

Even you. Oh, Gurumayi. You were so young and so ill-served by those you trusted most. This is enough to allow me to forgive you. You never had a chance to be anything other than what you became, did you? How could you even know what you had become until it was much too late?

And then what could you do but leave, give it up, throw off the saffron and stop playing the goose that laid the golden egg, over and over again.

But you're not really free, are you? They still have you playing the part and singing along whenever they call the tune. Only now it is for a much smaller sangham, comprised solely of those who love you too desperately to let go, and those whose who have the luxury of believing that their robust bank balances are reward for the good karma of many past lives spent in squalor.

Oh, Gurumayi, I loved you once and truly and for the sake of that love I ask one thing. Leave for good. Shut it all down. Give yourself the deep satisfaction at last of telling the trustees to go to hell. Dare them to reveal whatever it is they threaten you with; their very complicity makes their threats impotent.

Give yourself and your dearest, truest, closest followers the experience of total truth; release those who have sworn their lives to you. Tell them what you have known for years now; you no longer want their lives, you want your own.

Have the grace---the Grace!-- to let your followers go. Give us the freedom you would have for yourself. Realize that nothing you can say will ever take away what we all experienced together, not even an admission of your own culpability in the travesty that Siddha Yoga has become. We can heal and forgive; then live together as true seekers, or as separate expressions of that divine Self. As hard as the way forward may seem, it is preferable to the perpetual purgatory that we are all suffering now.

Take up the grace and the courage we all know you possess and lead us one last time, our Dear One.

Anon

Punch. Counter Punch.

2010-02-08T14:08:00.003-05:00

What do you all think of this exchange from the comments page of the last post?

PUNCH from Anonymous:

Oh Boy! I can almost not believe my eyes when I read that you have spent so much time, so many summers in Shree Muktananda Ashram and spend so much time in company of the physical form of Gurumayi and see that you haven't "got" any of her teachings!

"God dwells within you as you". Does that ring a bell? "The mantra is the Guru", "the teachings of the rays Guru", "The Heart is the hub of all sacred places. Go there and roam."... how many times did you hear that?! Did ANY of it get into your system? Did you put any of the teachings into practice? Have you been a siddha yoga student? Have you done your homework?! I'm so tired of all you "poor", "hurt" people in pain being "abandoned". You should be ashamed! You have received SO much and still are begging for more.

If you haven't experienced the Guru within, if you haven't experienced the Self, to put it plainly: if you haven't done your homework, what is the point of Gurumayi pampering you in person?!

Just for the record, I had the great fortune to spend some time in the physical presence of Gurumayi last year and let me tell you, she has never been more energetic, more alive, more in her role as a teacher than now. Just because she is not on tour, delivering talks all year long, doesn't mean she is not there for you. But the escencial question is: are you there for Her? Are you there for your own growth? Have you followed your 9 min OM sadhana every day? NO? Then do yourself and everyone else a favor and think before you blame Gurumayi and the SYDA for your own lack of committment.

February 2, 2010 1:32 PM

COUNTERPUNCH from (another) Anon

I suppose I understand the indignant response of the writer of the comment from Feb 2 that 'we' just "haven't 'got' any of her teachings." As is often the case, there is a certain lack of empathy and understanding behind the tongue-lashings delivered by those who proclaim the teachings that we should 'see God in each other.'

'Siddha Yoga' has always rested foursquare on the role of the 'Siddha,' the living master. The behavior of the Siddha in this case in no way measures up to the Masters of the past, who continued their work tirelessly and with compassion until their last breath -- for instance, Bhagawan Nityananda and even Muktananda (who at least spelled out what was happening and didn't stop showing up, even until the night of his passing).

If Gurumayi's health has deteriorated to the point that she can no longer function in her role, it is a tragedy; if she is hale and hearty, and "has never been more energetic, more alive, more in her role as a teacher than now," then at least those of us who dedicated well over a decade of our lives and sacrificed family, health, and looking after our own livelihood and well-being to work full time, seven days a week (yes, for years until we were urged to take a 'day off'') are owed an explanation for what has happened to the 'mission' of the 'meditation revolution' to which we had dedicated ourselves.

In the absence of any real explanation, we have all been left to make up excuses on our own, rather than hear some truth from the one who has so comfortably (and exclusively) occupied the 'seat' since the 1980s.

Since her behavior does not measure up to that of the Siddhas, then the obvious conclusion is that she is not who she has claimed to be (and don't give me any bull about 'she never claimed to be a siddha;' her entire role and authority as 'head of the lineage' is based upon that claim).

It is entirely possible to believe in and imbibe the teachings that "God dwells within you as you," and even to have experienced "the Guru within" and at the same time conclude that she is not -- or at least is no longer -- a 'Siddha Guru' or worthy of the authority she continues to exercise by proxy.

In fact, it is that very INNER experience that makes the conclusion about the 'outer' guru unavoidable, especially (in my own case) based upon my own very direct and 'personal' experience in her 'physical presence' on a number of occasions in my service to her over the years. The truth of the teachings, and the truth about 'Gurumayi' are two very separate things (although we have been encouraged to confuse them, and then chided for confusing them); and at this point it is quite clear to me that I can believe in and imbibe the teachings without having to make excuses for her and her behavior.

It is my very belief that God dwells within us all equally, and is the basis of our dignity and worth that leads me to expect an explanation when one human being or set of human beings treats other human beings in the way that 'Gurumayi' and her lieutenants have. To put them 'above' such responsibility denies the very truth of the teachings upon which they rest their authority (and there's no question that there are countless corrupt 'gurus' through the ages who have attempted to do so, writing their own 'teachings' on the matter of never questioning the 'guru'). If honesty is not granted to me out of respect for the God within me, who is me, then the God within me will certainly tell me the truth -- and has.

I have moved on, and am tending to my own growth. It is offensive to be scolded in the way that the writer of the post did, relying as he or she does on the old bait-and-switch of 'the Guru is the teachings' and 'don't blame Gurumayi and the SYDA for your own lack of commitment.' I know my commitment, and it doesn't necessarily require me to swallow every gimmick that gets thrown at us year after year.

The question remains: how exactly is Gurumayi fulfilling her own role as 'teacher' and authority as 'head of the lineage,' and what exactly IS HER commitment? We have every right to ask, and to expect an answer, particularly when we devoted years of our lives to supporting that authority. Her very behavior throws her authority and commitment into question, especially when compared to the commitment demonstrated by other Siddhas.

I really don't expect that an answer is forthcoming, and I'm not holding my breath. AND I have no patience left for the enablers who write such scathing (and dare I say self-righteous?) posts.

February 8, 2010 8:09 AM

A Saccharine Surprise (registered trademark)

2009-11-26T12:26:00.001-05:00

From a reader:

It’s been announced recently almost with irony that “Guess what? Your intention has been realized. Your dream has come true. Your wish has been granted. You get to do exactly what you intended, what you dreamt, and what you wished for—in the year 2010. Gurumayi is blessing us again with the Aum Sadhana for the year 2010. Those who attended the Sweet Surprise Satsang in 2009 will have an opportunity to go deeper into the practice of the Siddha Yoga Message in the coming year” Again we are told there will be a rerun of the previous year’s message but telling us this is exactly “what we dreamt” . That’s not what I dreamt, just the way its phrased is a bit disturbing, trying to convince you, you want something you don’t. Only blind fanatics could say that’s right we won’t see Gurumayi again, we’ll hear a recording, just as I wanted! When they know everyone is shouting where are you? they even go further by saying “Whether it is your first time, your second time, or your tenth time participating“ I understand one teaching can be eternal such as “love your neighbor as yourself” or in this case “God dwells within you as you” These teachings have no expiration date so you can reflect on them forever until you realize fully their meaning and intention. But to tell us we will hear this year the same message we received last year in the same manner as this year’s only intensive was the rerun of last years and pretend that that’s what we are hoping for is just inexplainable. Yupi, great! We get to continue wondering where is she, why the silence, just what we are all dreaming of, a big question mark. Thanks for allowing me to share my thoughts here and I wish others would speak out. Am I so wrong? Am I alone? Is this really your dream come true? Blessings to all in this Thanks Giving Day, a bit ironic I know.

Can there be a Siddha Yoga without a Guru?

2009-10-19T12:25:00.003-04:00

Dear Gurumayi
I remember with some melancholy my days in the Ashram, one thing I’ve learned: don’t be influenced by gossip and chatter. Your worst enemies are some of your followers and You must be partially responsible for it, to say the least. This “I am Shiva” has been misunderstood for “I’ll do whatever I want” including eating disorderly, lack of discipline and in general , disrespect for the teachings and for others. Siddha yogis have become egoistic, ritualistic and fanatic, more obsessed with the pronunciation of the Guru Gita than with its meaning, more focused on the form than on the content. The question is: can there be Siddha Yoga without a Guru? (Form without content) It is true that the Guru has always been taught as a principle, as an abstract, as the Absolute but it is also true that there has always been a physical relation with the Teacher, essential for the gift of the Shakti to occur. Only a living Guru, with two arms and two leg can give Shaktipat, according to the Guru Gita. You have transformed this Guru-Disciple relationship into a purely abstract relation, a blind reaching for an inner self many times hidden under layers of ignorance for many of us, this makes us no different from other Religions or cults in which followers pray to the Unknown and with hope wait for answers. In Siddha yoga there was no need for “hope” there was reality! In Siddha Yoga the answers came from the words of the Guru but now your lips are closed and the disciples are confused talking to each other and to our egos, in search for answers. The problem is that we are not reaching deep enough, our meditations have become prayers and the answers to those prayers are basically “do whatever you want” or “You like it, go for it” Shivoham misunderstood. We are lost with no clear guidance. Videos or swamis will not do, without You there is no SYDA, I believe. Please renew the so much needed direct relationship with us your devotees and allow our egos to dissolve in the ocean of bliss.

Anon

Catch you later, chicka! And thanks for everything.

2009-10-19T12:22:00.002-04:00

Dear Gurumayi,

I started this yoga over 14 years ago now, and I gave much to it, although not as much as some. What I gave, and how much of myself I gave, was still significant, to me.

Growing up (I started this yoga in my teens) I have learnt a good deal of things, and the internet has helped me understand myself, and my relation to you, to Muktananda, and to Nityananda.

I'd like to let you know what I've learnt.

I've learnt that Nityananda was (as remains) a genuine saint, without guile, without desire, available to all. From him, came many, many, many so called "gurus" and "teachers" claiming to have a link to his power, claiming to have "inherited" his ability. But really, there is no-one other than Nityananda who can do this!

Somehow, using deep, dark magical yogic techniques, Muktananda learnt how to "steal" the power from Nityananda and use it, but he did not stay true to Nityanandas teachings. And of course, this has continued with you.

I was drawn to your power, and the power I could acces from you. Now I realise that this is all a sham, this power was never yours!

This power was always Nityananda's power, one which he laughed at becuase he knew, this power was in all of us, not to be kept with anyone one of us! And this includes, not to be kept with you!

When I visited Ganeshpuri, and visited your ashram Nityananda's statues and temple, I met, face to face, the prescence of Nityananda. What he showed me, was that he was worshipping me! I found this strange, because I was there to worship him, and what is there about me that had any value?

Of course he answered and showed me, that this is how it all works. Through Nityananda worshipping me, as God, becuase he honours me, I receive his grace, his blessings, his power. He does this, because I worship him, and in turn, give him my grace, my blessings, and my power. This exchange realises that both he and I are one and the same, and this exchange is just one giving to oneself..

Neither you nor Muktananda ever gave me this experience. And it was through this that I can now realise that you have stolen his power, for you own and put it to your own use, for your own benefit. THis is not how it works girl!

You have the millions of dollars we've given you, you have the ongoing devoted fans who will never (unfortunately) stop serviing you as your viritual slaves.. so great, time you go on your merry way and I will go on mine.

And I do have onething though, I want to thank you for introducing me to the one true genuine link to God, and that is Bagawan Nityanadan, and in him, I beleive I have found the real deal... all those who came after, are mere shadows and vague reflections of the real thing!

Catch you later chicka! And thanks for everything.

I now release you from myself, and wish you well in your path of devotion and hope that you too, can realise the sham of what has happened, and rectify the part you played, as dhama requires.

Sincerely,

Blake

You taught me something, but not what I expected...

2009-10-19T12:20:00.001-04:00

Dear gurumayi,

I rarely think about you these days. You just seem like another New Age guru-type who made enough off naive followers to retire in style. There are sure alot of them. The scriptures of your tradition say that in Kali Yuga the world will be filled with false teachers scamming those naive enough to follow them.

I had a great longing for god, for a teacher capable of pointing me towards full awakening. I read too many books about "spiritual experiences" and thought you were the real deal when I started having those "golden experiences" you said were "signs we were making progress on the path". I didn't realize you meant the "path" towards greater Delusion. Oh gurumayi, don't you know that experiences come and go? that they are not what is real? That Truth is found right here and now, always available, simple and quiet: "what is"..no need for silk cushions, darshan baskets filled with gold bracelets, courses and intensives, altered states and all the rest.

You taught me something. But not what I expected and not what was touted by you and by your "swamis". I feel so much sympathy for the broken hearted devotees. May we all realize together (including you, gurumayi) that the Truth of our Being-ness cannot be given to us by someone else.

an older and wiser person

Even Without You

2009-09-28T19:24:00.003-04:00

Dear Gurumayi,

A few years back when my brother died and the rest of the family wasn't told about it until a month later I was in such a bad way, in so much emotional pain. I wrote you a letter begging for help. I wish you had written back, so at least I know you had received it.

As time keeps going by and you seem more and more remote I have turned to other saints like bede baba and ramakrishna. I still feel the shakti, even without you being involved.

I really don't understand why you abandoned your devotees. At first I thought you were ill, or writing a book or something, but now I really have run out of explanations for you. You left us, the messages have become standard lame platitudes, and an intensive now runs about $500.

Despite everything I still love you and wish you well. Wish you felt the same way about us.

Cobra

Express Yourself

2009-09-13T10:49:00.002-04:00

Dear Gurumayi,

I do not know where on the planet you are for sure. I guess I do not really care. But I want what you took from me back.

You can send it express.

Thank you,
Former devoted peon to your incredible ego.

Mailbox Missive

2009-09-11T18:06:00.006-04:00

Dear Seekher,

It’s been three years now since undertaking the gut-wrenching affair of examining the body of evidence available at LSY; concluding with tears streaming down my face, that Muktananda had in fact engaged in sexual liaisons with his young devotees, and that Gurumayi was actively engaged in suppressing the truth. The audio from the American religious scholar’s conference was the last straw, when the levee broke and years of denial (decades really) cascaded over the falls of ‘trust your own experience’, and belief, like mists that rise from watery precipice, vaporized and carried away, invisible, to be belief no more.

Still, the warm and cozy, the embers of unique experience, like a cottage light in lonely winter, linger, even in dreams. Human nature enjoys the generalized, the romanticized, yet sometimes it’s important to see clearly, for the sake of growth.

Firstly, I wonder, was it really so “great” to drop a letter in the darshan basket back when? Well it might have seemed wonderful to have direct access to God given answers, but of course there first had to be a question, i.e. a problem, and the answer if or when it arrived, often took on a form letter quality – short on details and long on devotional catch phrasing. And since regularly scheduled darshan ended in the late nineties I believe, writing a letter with the expectation of finding a home for it in a living guru darshan basket is old, old, old. Son, it’s been the postal service for practically all the faithful for more than 10 years now.

I wrote Gurumayi a letter back in ’84 or so. The problem was that after several days of intense meditation, which was fairly often, I experienced pain at the top of the throat, around the uvula to be exact, and then my health would suffer and I’d have to cut back on mediation. I didn’t actually say uvula in my letter because at the time I wasn’t sure what that flesh thing was called and anyway I assumed that Gurumayi would divinely understand even if I was slightly less specific.

It took over 2 months for a reply to reach my mailbox, but I remember well that on the morning the letter finally arrived I was feeling so pranically hopped-up, really lit and buzzing, and I ‘just knew’ that a letter from Gurumayi was waiting for me at home. Basically the letter said that guru loved me and kept me in her thoughts, and wasn’t it a wonderful Siddha path that we walked together, and keep up your sadhana. The secretary ended by mentioning that Gurumayi had once said that papaya enzymes were good for sore throats.

I was ecstatic about the receiving a letter and thrilled that I was in touch with the Shakti, enough to psychically intuit its eventual arrival. On the other hand I was disappointed that the thrust of my problem wasn’t really addressed, that maybe Gurumayi didn’t know why I had pain or didn’t understand the question. The answer itself wasn’t satisfactory and papaya enzymes, many bottles over many years, totally missed the mark. Some time later while reading a book about Kundalini yoga I learned that there’s a rather important sub-chakra located in the region of the uvula, at the top of the throat. That was actually the yogic answer to my yogic question and I felt better for having finally discovered it, but it raised the question, “why didn’t Gurumayi tell me that in the first place”. At the time I was annoyed with myself for not having specified the ‘uvula’, though in retrospect who am I kidding, I would have in all likelihood gotten the same syrupy bhakti-fied answer either way. Gurumayi was neither omniscient nor a sub-chakra connoisseur. She simply wasn’t detail oriented and certain didn’t want to micro-manage anyone’s chakras. Keep it simple; pray to the guru, meditate a little, do seva, send money, I love you – everything happens for the best.

Speaking of letters, I’ll add that when I was suffering a health crisis in 2001, my wife sent 2 letters to Gurumayi on my behalf. The first was, according to the correspondence office, lost, and the second was answered by what I can only call a form letter. Even then as a hardcore devotee I was so upset that I picked up a stick beat the ground in frustration. When I later wrote a letter to Gurumayi myself, I received a telephone reply from her secretary, though for the most part the suggestions she gave me were not helpful and indirectly cost several thousands of dollars in treatment options.

In any event, back to generalizations. Secondly then, I object to characterizations of unapproved channels, namely eX-SY, as “full of nothing but vitriol”. While I’ve posted anonymously to your blog several times in the past, to me most memorably a lyrical reply to your ‘The Pruned Tree’ entry, I’ve been posting with some regularity at eX-SY for about three years now, and, according to my sensibilities, while the occasional splatter of vitriol does bubble up – hey some people are hurt - by and large the comments are level-headed, thoughtful, sometimes comical and even artful.

You are absolutely right in one respect; the approved channels are censored, and in being so they bottle up years of underpinned discontent till it ferments and expresses itself in the vinegary vitriol you’ve referred to. Well only saints and those who’ve never been jilted are completely without vitriol, though the former are lying and the latter don’t exist.

MovedByGod (MBG)

P.O. Box Darshan Basket

2009-09-07T14:59:00.011-04:00

Remember how great it was when we could take a letter up to Gurumayi in darshan, reverently lay it in her basket and then, a few weeks or sometimes months later, receive an answer written by one of her darshan secretaries? For so many of us, this was the only way we had to approach the Guru looking for help and advice about some of the most important decisions of our lives. Well, darshan secretaries have gone the way of darshan but many, many people still feel the loss. Now, more than ever, they want to write to Gurumayi and confide their innermost feelings in a more tangible way than prayer and contemplation alone.

So, I'm opening up Rituals of Disenchantment to everyone—anyone—who wants to write to Gurumayi. Still avid devotees and/or rabid EX-er's are welcome. I recognize that this decision alone might stack the decks to the exes, as active devotees may not be willing to post here. I hope that is not the case. It's been a year since I posted to RoD and many things have changed, but my desire to hear from Gurumayi's devotees and share this space with them has not. So all are invited, and you are welcome to sign your post or remain completely anonymous—without even your internet name to identify you.

Here's how it will work. You send RoD a comment to this post and state you want to post a letter. Put the letter in the body of your comment. I will not approve these comments for publication, but instead will cut and paste them into a new post. I will then delete your comment and, if you wish to remain anonymous, not include any identification in the actual post.

I'm looking at this website as a repository of dreams, both longed for and unfulfilled. It's up to you to supply the dreams, the wishes, the fervent supplications and even the angry denouncements. Dreams are powerful magic, whether pursued or thwarted. So maybe I'm looking for a little Re-Enchantment after all.

PS: Not everyone wants to post a letter and I do expect comments, so fire these at me as well and I will publish them all; tell me I'm naive, a backslider, a reprobate, a hopeless romantic who lacks the courage of their convictions. Slander me as a demon dwelling in a waterless place, or simply an attention seeking whore who wants nothing less than to be ignored. Tell me how you have survived the drought of her absence and if you are one of the few to have seen her, tell us all about it and I promise you that your name will never be revealed. For better or worse---for better and worse---all those years we spent together sipping chai before dawn and sleepily chanting the Guru Gita, or huddled together in hushed silence as SHE entered the darkened meditation hall during an intensive, or swaying as the thousand-throated One in the Shakti Mandap during ecstatic Labor Day chants, have marked us. Set us apart. There is no place else where we can be ourselves, talk among ourselves, argue and cajole, reminisce and rejoice, or remember so that we might at last forget. All the approved channels are censored and the un-approved ones full of nothing but vitriol. Here you can be yourself. Or even your Self.

Letter to An Other Guru

2008-08-09T01:34:00.004-04:00

Dear Gurumayi:

I been thinking about you and feeling bad, like we chased you off or something. I know that's dumb, right? Magdala (that's my mom, you probably remember her as Madri but lately she's been seeing this gnostic guy) keeps saying something must have happened to you, that you would never just disappear. She knows you haven't left your body because she would sense a disturbance that large in the Ground of All Being. That's what my mom believes, but then she thinks her grocery list is recorded forever in the akashic records.

I decided to write you because I know you're not getting as much mail these days, and some of what you do get isn't so nice and I wanted to tell you that people still love you very much, even if they don't communicating that except in spirit. It's just so hard because we all miss you so much and I'm not sure you miss us. At all.

I'm sorry if this letter isn't like the ones you probably remember me bringing you in darshan. I was so much more flowery when I was a kid.

just got back from a bike ride in the park and as I was changing into my jeans I felt this hard little

please don't be a stranger

Letter to a Lost Guru

2008-08-07T21:47:00.008-04:00

"Again and again she hurriedly appeared in the margins of my life, without influencing in the least its basic text... Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence without turning her head... Once I was shown her photograph in a fashion magazine full of autumn leaves and gloves and windswept golf links. On a certain Christmas, she sent me a picture postcard with snow and stars."

~Nabakov, Spring in Fialta

Hey G:

It's safe to come out now. If you're still reading this—I'm pretty sure everyone has forgotten about Rituals of Disenchantment except you and me (and whoever has the seva of monitoring and printing out your web-mentions, naturally). And, so, now that we're nearly alone...

Look, I almost forgive you for all of it. The years lost in selfish service, the hundred-grand or so invested in dreams of enlightenment that vanished the day I finally woke up—these turned out to be not that difficult to relinquish, after all. I discovered it's not in me to grow old with regrets. Maybe that's even something I learned from Siddha Yoga. If so, consider the money paid back in full.

Other losses are not so easily forgotten. Trust. Belief. Friends. Family, for some. For many. You'll forgive me if I don't chant the entire litany, we understand each other well enough.

Last night there was a cricket outside my 6th floor bedroom window, chirping its endless one-note song from atop a nearby tree. In twenty-eight years in New York I'd never heard a cricket outside of Central Park. He's back again, and just now I transformed my annoyance at this little rerun into something like gratitude for another night's special serenade. The sort of little miracle you were always so good at pulling out of your sleeves, G. It made me miss you.

Damn. Look at me, I almost just experience-shared all over us both!

I feel I have to tell you this—right now, I am somewhat stoned. Not whacked, just mellow. I hesitate to mention it because I know I'll get a bunch of posts from breathless readers panting: "What path are you following? Smoking pot is SO NOT spearitchool!" These sort of comments can be tiresome to moderate. I never did understand the rule against getting high in Siddha Yoga—weed is most definitely more spiritual than Laksmi oil or Blue Pearl incense. The sevites who most liked to enforce the ban on pot were usually those who, IMHO, desperately needed to skip the evening chant, sneak out behind the cow shed and torch up a really fat one.

But-enough-about-me-how-about-you! Where the hell have you been? Fun Fact. Most people who find this blog through a Google search are directed to Ritual's very first post, entitled "Where The Hell is Gurumayi?" That means they were all typing that exact question into the search bar with the exact same expression of frustration! That's hilarious! The worldwide Siddha Yoga sangham has atomized into a million separate people, all searching with the same words to find the same thing. You.

I was disappointed to read in Guruphiliac that you like spending time in Ojai and Italy. I would have pegged you for a Goa girl. All that abject abandon to trance music beating beneath neon club lights—so like the good old dancing sapthas in the Shakti Mandap, yes?

No, No, you're right. I'm fishing. I have no idea where in the world you are. That used to make me nervous, made me think that I might accidentally run into you one day on the streets of New York. I'd heard how you occasionally pitched the saffron while traveling, and imagined bumping into you at the Well-Appointed Traveler on Broadway, me in a business suit buying a neck pillow, you in jeans and a sweater leafing through a Lonely Planet Guide to....where? Where would it be, G? When you finally found time away from SoFalls and GSP and touring, where did you like to go? And are you there now?

It wouldn't make me nervous to encounter you by chance today. I actually think I'd find it a tasty coincidence. The best would be to run into you at an airport bar, both our flights delayed for hours. Then I could buy you a drink (let's see, what would yours be, what would it be......Absolut Mango Lassi!) and then we could just play Catch the Freak Up, Girrrrrl. Only one rule; I can't ask you for any advice and you can't ask me for any money. Ha! Didn't see that one coming, did you!

(Listen, don't be pissed. You are way overdue for some payback. Any of your girls who aren't ribbing you back and calling you on your shit—cut them loose, they still think you're God and need to get away from you for everyone's sake. And no, the rule doesn't say I can't give you any advice. Just be grateful I'm not asking you for money.)

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

2008-03-15T12:00:00.004-04:00

Friends. I've been away too long—my bad. Two things were going on in my life. One you know; my disenchantment with Siddha Yoga is complete. Which is not to say that I reject it utterly, or feel that I received nothing good or positive from the path. But I am no longer on that path, and am feeling my way towards the next, which has lessened my need to participate here.

The other thing is that I've been having a lot of stress at work, the result of which is that I resigned this week. The details of the drama that led up to my quitting are not all that interesting to me, and I'm certain they wouldn't be to you. But, there is an aspect of this situation that I find fascinating, and that proceeds directly from having left SY. The decision to leave the job was mine, it was not mutual and I left without another job lined up. In short, I walked. Leaving that way required a kind of moral courage that I totally lacked during my time with Gurumayi.

To be a good Siddha Yogi is to nurture a tenuous grasp of your own reality. Blissful feelings while meditating or chanting are not taken at face value, but are co-opted as evidence of that mystical belief system called the "Guru-Disciple Relationship". Every event, every feeling, each coincidence is re-interpreted in light of the "teachings" until it becomes subsumed by your beliefs. Critical thought and evaluation are crippled. This is particularly true of negative events. How many times have we dismissed difficulties with a seva supervisor, or a friend or co-worker, as karmic—the Guru's fire burning off our negative samskaras? How often have we tolerated situations that flew in the face of our own self-respect, our true evaluation of self-worth, because it seemed more "yogic" to comply, knuckle under, obey? Speaking for myself, I've lost count.

Patience is not a virtue when it means staying in a relationship that is well past its expiration date. Surrender and capitulation to other's manipulation destroys the fabric of our own reality. Our conditioning in SY too often means that we accept others stories even when we know deep down that they're not true, that they twist reality in order to justify bad behavior against us. Why? Because that is a trick we learned too well during our time at the ashram, excusing those in authority--including Gurumayi--when their behavior contradicted the teachings, finding a way to make sense of those blatant contradictions by confusing, disbelieving, misremembering our own experiences.

When confronted with this dynamic at work this time, I didn't—couldn't—back down. I knew that I had to remove myself from the situation because it would not change. I didn't search for other-worldly yogic explanations of what was going down. I trusted the evidence of my own senses, took them at face value, evaluated events and recognized patterns. I made up my own mind.

As I write this, I realize it sounds very elemental. But for me, it is a liberation. One of the patterns that I recognized was my own. When I was a young child my father remarried and my stepmother was particularly cruel to me and my brothers and sister. My father traveled a lot, and when he did she would berate and beat us, and mentally abuse us, with impunity. When he returned she would make up stories to justify our bruises, or to counter our versions of what happened. Hauled before him we were told to admit our mistakes and take our punishment. Telling the truth, which meant denying our stepmother's lies, only made things worse. We weren't believed and our punishment was increased. Very early on, I learned that to tell truth to power was futile.

This became a lifelong habit. It didn't stop my from telling my truth, but it did lead me to capitulate to other's "truths" when they contradicted mine, if they were in a position of power and even when I knew what they said wasn't true. It's a habit I broke this week, and it had nothing to do with Guru's grace, and everything to do with the clarity of mind and self-respect that came when I turned my back on the path and walked away from that realm of delusion.

The Pruned Tree

2008-02-19T21:29:00.011-05:00

(this one's for Joshua)

As a torn paper might seal up its side,

Or a streak of water stitch itself to silk

And disappear, my wound has been my healing,

And I am made more beautiful by losses.

See the flat water in the distance nodding

Approval, the light that fell in love with statues,

Seeing me alive, turns its motion toward me.

Shorn, I rejoice in what was taken from me.

What can the moonlight do with my new shape

But trace and retrace its miracle of order?

I stand, waiting for the strange reaction

Of insects who knew me in my larger self,

Unkempt, in a naturalness I did not love.

Even the dog's voice rings with a new echo,

And all the little leaves I shed are singing,

Singing to the moon of shapely newness.

Somewhere what I lost I hope is springing

To life again. The roofs, astonished by me,

Are taking new bearings in the night, the owl

Is crying for a further wisdom, the lilac

Putting forth its strongest scent to find me.

Butterflies, like sails in grooves, are winging

out of the water to wash me, wash me.

Now, I am stirring like a seed in China.

---Howard Moss

Holy Ghosts

2008-01-20T20:33:00.000-05:00

The other day I was talking with a co-worker who practices formal meditation. I had thought his practice was Zen, but he explained that his yoga was actually Tantric Tibetan Buddhism. I was immediately intrigued, particularly given that I confessed my own love of ritualistic yogic worship was fostered by my Roman Catholic past, and he replied that his same heritage led him to love the pujas and ceremonies of his chosen path. He talked of Green Tara and Boddhisatvas and the various bardos of existence that make up our physical reality and that of our journey after death. I tried, lamely, to explain the doctrine of recognition as espoused in the Pratyabijna-hridayam, but began to flail almost as soon as I started. I realized that I had studied Kashmir Shaivism for twenty years to no avail. Even if I questioned the very premise of Guru-ignited enlightenment, I couldn't say exactly what I was abjuring.

The next day I visited my storage unit and extracted Paul Muller Ortega's The Sacred Heart of Shiva, as well as Swami Shantananda's exposition on the Pratyabijna-hridayam. I wanted to understand and know the (putative) scriptural basis of Siddha Yoga practice. I'm reading these resources now. There is so much to be said about Siddha Yoga's shameful seduction and betrayal of today's leading scholars of Kaula Tantra teachings. I suppose I think if I can write this story, this shameful chapter in the history of SY, I will at least know what of the philosophical underpinnings of our faith I can retrieve and rescue.

Unanswered Prayers

2008-01-15T18:24:00.001-05:00

Do you remember the golden period of Siddha Yoga expansionism that occurred in the 1990's? George Afif had been banished back to the Beirut ghetto he'd crawled out of, the New Yorker article was still just a blip on the radar, and each summer every public program in South Fallsburg rang with the clarion call that Siddha Yoga students must take Baba's meditation revolution to the masses. Gurumayi was going on world tours, and where she couldn't go personally she was sending ambassadors. I know one woman who traveled at her behest throughout China; when she returned she told me that she had seen white bands of shakti encircling the globe during meditation, one for each of the apostles Gurumayi was sending to spread SY meditation around the world.

Of course, the rank and file couldn't be trusted to undertake these delicate international missions, but we were told there was a way in which we could help. Through talking about Siddha Yoga to our friends and neighbors at the local level, and supporting the global mission through regular dakshina, we could do our part to ensure that the teachings of Siddha Yoga, and the inestimable gift of shaktipat diksha, would be transmitted to all humankind. Liberation, we were told, was the birthright of every living being. And, of course, we were exhorted to offer our prayers, chanting and practices for the spread of the meditation revolution

Well, as St. Teresa of Avila was fond of saying, "thank God for unanswered prayers."

If Siddha Yoga had succeeded in its global proselityzing mission, we might have found ourselves as absolutely batshit crazy as Tom Cruise in this internal Church of Scientology recruiting video. It was created as part of the ceremony during which he was awarded some sort of Scientology Medal of Honor for introducing 1 billion humans on the planet to the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard.

To view the video don't click on the YouTube picture above (YouTube took the video down due to legal action by the Church of Scientology citing copyright infringement) click on this link, but do it soon, there is no telling how long it will remain up.

The first time I watched this I thought that Tom's remarks must have been edited into incoherence. The man seems to be saying ABSOLUTELY NOTHING at all. But, armed with the index provided by an ex-church member (below) I soon realized that Tom, and the rest of his El Ron worshippers, see their mission as nothing less than total world domination.

(A letter from a former longterm Scientologist posted on Radar.com gives the meaning behind the most cryptic of Tom's references)

"I was a Scientologist for almost 30 years and I can translate what Cruise is saying," wrote Pieniadz. "He's speaking 'Scientologese,' which is a bogus language that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard made up in order to assist in the indoctrination of his followers."

Here are Pieniadz's translations:
• KSW: Short for Keeping Scientology Working, a policy written by Hubbard in the 1960s that requires all Scientologists to follow his words and his rules exactly.

• Orgs: An abbreviation for "organizations"; describes all churches of Scientology throughout the world.

• David Miscavige: He is the current leader of Scientology. He's the equivalent of the Pope to the Catholics.

• Out-ethics: Any behavior that violates any of Hubbard's rules of conduct.

• Put ethics in someone else: Make others conform to Hubbard's rules of behavior.

• Criminon: Scientology front group that tries to recruit through the prisons.

• SP: Suppressive Person. Anyone who doesn't like Scientology and/or criticizes Scientology.

• PTS/SP: Another bogus Hubbard term to define behavior that goes against Scientology rules.

• LRH technology or "tech": All of the Scientology policies, rules, mandates, and procedures.

The Hand in the Trap

2008-01-13T14:16:00.000-05:00

The title of my last post: "When what we had hoped for came to nothing, we revived." is a quote by Rebecca West (or so I read somewhere years ago; I've never been able to track down its origin in her writings.) I loved it when I first read it in my twenties, even though I knew I was too young to truly understand the paradox it so neatly contains. But I've carried those words around with me all this time, in memory, waiting for the situation that they describe to arise. And now it's here.

It's true that I had hoped the 2008 message would be an honest accounting of where SY is now (if not an admission of how we got here). That is was not, that it was nothing more than a recitation of the story of "the lineage", and an exhortation to do more sadhana mixed with contemplations obviously designed to make the listener believe he or she hadn't done enough, given enough, worshipped enough—was not a surprise, but a true disappointment.

It was a talk that could only have satisfied true believers, those who came looking to hear their beliefs reiterated, and so reinforced. I don't feel any special pride at no longer being one of these; I was unquestionably and unquestioningly one for many, many years.

So, where is the revival? For me, it lies outside of the practice of Siddha Yoga. Perhaps, probably, this talk will divide the sangham in two once again, at a moment when those who had left and those who had stayed were finally beginning to talk among themselves honestly and openly. Maybe it was designed to do just that. After all, talking amongst ourselves without a "moderator" was never permitted before, at least not in an official capacity.

My hope is that those who still identify as "belonging to" or practicing Siddha Yoga will stick around and talk about their experience of the message, its import on their sadhana and its effect. I hope I haven't scared you all away with my sarcastic remarks; I've thought about going back and editing them out but have not. They encapsulate my "experience" of the talk as cogently as I know how to. Please balance them out with your own, positive experiences if you'd like.

The title of this post is also from a quote, by Saint Augustine: "She who places her hand in a trap, carries the trap with her."

With this 2008 Message talk I think I see the trap that Gurumayi has placed her hand in. She will not, dare not try to go back to "the way things were". It would open too many questions, some of the official sort, that must remain unasked and unanswered. I don't believe that she wants to do this anyway--otherwise, what was the point in running away? But, "Gurumayi" can't just disappear indefinitely. Too many others have their lives and livelihoods wrapped up in a continued SYDA foundation and the appearance, at least, of an active organization. There may even be the truest of the true believers out there who would become unbalanced and dangerous if it all came apart.

So Gurumayi is condemned to continue to exist, at least periodically in public, and to continue exercising the last siddhi that has not abandoned her—that of mass thought control. Judging by this talk, that power is failing her too. Perhaps one day when it leaves her at last and the hope of controlling others finally blinks out, Malti will revive as well.

When what we had hoped for came to nothing, we revived.

2008-01-13T00:15:00.000-05:00

OK, folks, let's dance this mess around one last time. Rat-a-tat-tat, just the facts, ma'am. I'll save the extended commentary for the comments page, where it's gonna go on regardless.

Where were we? Oh, yes. When last we left our lady in orange she had just finished relating the tale of the ten nincompoop seekers, who couldn't manage to count to ten between them, and then, after wishing Baba a happy 100th birthday several times in several different ways, she mentioned Play of Consciousness before reminding us that we have the treasure of the Siddha Yoga path only because of Baba's study, practice, assimilation and implementation of the teachings he received from his Guru.

At this point we were more than half way through the broadcast, and still there has been no mention of the message for the year. This is highly unusual, based on past years the formula for the New Year's talk was clear, after a brief introduction Gurumayi would quickly announce the message, then spend the balance of the talk uncovering and unfolding its meaning. During the 2004 talk, for instance, only four or five minutes passed before Gurumayi announced the message for the year. But, we still aren't there yet. First, Gurumayi wants to remind us all about the importance of sadhana:

"Sadhana gives you the means to see clearly what was not clear before. Just as the full moon blazing through dark clouds will illumine a landscape and allow you to move through it with ease, so with shaktipat a light is lit inside you. By means of that light you see things you couldn't see before. your physical and subtle senses are heightened, they adjust to a finer degree of perception than you knew before, perception of color and form, of energy and intention, of people and situations. In truth, sadhana for us is to experience this Bountiful grace. As you practice sadhana you come to a true estimate of the value of grace in your life. Did you hear that? As you practice sadhana you come to a true estimate of the value of grace in your life."

Next, Gurumayi told the story of the Sufi saint Rabia who, when asked what percentage of God she had attained, replied 100%. When next asked how much of herself she had given to God, she replied "100%, I got as much as I gave." Gurumayi paused and asked her audience of silent, absent listeners to contemplate Rabia's words:

"I got as much as I gave."

This contemplation was followed by a brief break to stand and stretch, punctuated after a minute or two by Nivritti Gillet greasily "welcoming" us back to our seats.

Gurumayi then asked us to close our eyes and visualize a column of light extending from the base of our spine up to the crown of the head. Your breath moves up and down the golden column as it comes in and goes out of you body. Let the breath come in easy, let the breath go out easy. Feel your own breath coming in and going out. Feel the breath at the top of your head. Feel the breath inside your head... et cetera, et cetera, you know the drill.

Then, the moment we had all been waiting for! "The Siddha Yoga Message for 2008 is..." (she taps mic three times to be sure we're all still awake out there)

"Search for the knowledge of the Truth and become established in the awareness of the Self."

Gurumayi continued: "In the coming year I would like you to study the new year's message for 2008 in the same way you have already learned to study through your work with the daily attributes, or your study of the sadhana of the heart, or the home study course. Study each world of the message and apply its meaning an d hidden blessings to your daily practice and daily life. You can do it! You have done it! Day by day. As you pondered over each new attribute, or quotation. Discover the message for 2008 word by word and extract the subtleties, the various connection between the words, and between the words and you life! ascertain the depth of color and form, of energy and intention, of people and situations."

Perhaps by way of further encouragement, Gurumayi added a small morsel of the fruit of her own contemplation: "While I was studying the words of this message and the composition of the sentence what leapt out for me is: you need to have both—the knowledge of awareness, and the awareness of knowledge."

Uhhumm. That's just what I was thinking.

"In his book Light on the Path Swami Muktananda says: Knowledge is one of the ways of obtaining God realization. It is knowing one's real self by acquiring knowledge of the truth in its essence, by the teachings of a guru. Baba Muktananda's words: through the teachings of a Guru. This is something Baba says over and over again. Disciples receive the teachings in their manifest and subtle forms from a Guru."

Gurumayi then narrated what she described as a commonly held fantasy of enlightenment: You meet the master in a remote place, bow and fold your hands, the master gazes at you with a bittersweet smile and Presto Magico! Enlightenment is yours!

But, Gurumayi asked, was this Baba's way? No. When you went up to Baba in darshan and asked for the mantra, or for the experience of meditation, he would hand you a mantra card, or point to a corner of the room and tell you to go sit, very matter of factly. Still, "the mantra came alive in the sound of your own silent breath. Meditation enveloped you in the deepest stillness. Your life was transformed. "

Hey, wait a minute, you might say! Isn't that a variation of the fantasy she just talked about? Never mind, you're missing the point of the story, which is:

"It is not about your own expectation of the Guru, or about indulging in fantasies of initiation in exotic settings. It is actually about following the teachings of the Guru."

At this point it has been several long minutes since we've had a good story, so Gurumayi offers one, a real one! from an early edition of the Ganeshpuri newsletter, "Siddha Path".

fairy dust chimes

"My friend and I had been going to Ganeshpuri village for Bhagawan Nityananda's darshan for many years. This happened 2 or 3 years before revered baba Nityananda took mahasamadhi. At that time we had no knowledge of who Swami Muktananda baba was. In those days, Muktanandaji lived in two rooms in Ghavdevi We would have baba Nityananda's darshan, and then go straight back to Bombay. One day Bhagawan asked, did you go to Gavdevi? When we said no, he told us to visit Swami Muktananda in Gavdevi before going back to Bombay. He had told us this one time before as well, to first go see Swami Muktananda, and then come back to see him in Ganeshpuri.

Whenever Bhagawan Nityananda's devotees would come to see him, he would tell them to go meet Swami Muktananda first. Every week when we would go to see Nityananda he would ask the Same question: Have you already gone to meet Muktananda of Gavdevi? We would reply, eh, we'll meet him on our way back home. One day Bhagawan NItyananda asked as always: did you already meet Muktananda? Before we could reply he said Muktananda Baba very wise, knower of the scriptures, saint. In this way he went on speaking in his succinct style. It was because of Nityananda that we could have the good fortune of receiving the nectar of knowledge from Swami Muktananda baba. Sometimes when we would go to see Swami Muktananda first, he would ask; did you already go to Ganeshpuri to see Bhagavan Nityananada? And when we would go to Bhagawan Nityananda first, he would ask: did you meet Muktananda? In this way, this bound of love between guru and disciple carried on to the end. Truly speaking, Bhagawan Nityananda himself trusted us to revered baba Muktananda."

Now, I have no reason to doubt this tale, but it did raise a few questions. Why, if everyone in the Guru tradition is always waiting and pleading for a command from their Guru, did these two hapless fellows travel all the way from Bombay to not only ignore Nityananda's direct instructions to go see Muktananda once, but several times running? I thought the Big Guy would assault people with sticks and throw stones at them for less? One can't fault them for being confused, though, with Nityananda sending them to Muktananda who sends them back to Nityananda, who send them on to Muktananda and so on.

But, we're missing the point again, and then there are the fairy dust chimes telling us story time is over...

Next Gurumayi sings in Hindi Baba's prayer to his Guru, from Play of Consciousness (so we did make it back there, after all) before giving the English translation. And then she has an inspiration:

"Baba's prayer is just so divine. In your future study of the message I would like to make a suggestion. You can cultivate your creative expression by writing a prayer to the guru! Here is one way to approach it; read Baba's prayer from Play of Consciousness several times through. Notice if any particular word or phrase draws your attention, calls to you. Or maybe it is an image or a feeling that is evoked for you. Note that word, or image or feeling in your journal. Allow it to resonate for you. You can even devote a special section of your journal to your experiences of the Guru. Or, you can create a Guru journal! Hmmmm. Be creative. Don't hesitate to write down any inspiration that arises for you, know that once you have set your intention to create your prayer, you will begin to attract the very images and words that will fulfill your intention. "

(Must be that 'ole debil Shakti again, heightening your physical and subtle senses and fine-tuning them to a higher degree of perception...)

And then Gurumayi repeats the message again in English and Hindi and...

SGMKJ!

The uses of disenchantment

2008-01-07T22:36:00.000-05:00

Years ago I was watching the Disney film "Beauty and the Beast" on DVD with my nieces in my brother's living room. They were both enraptured with the tale, hanging on every twist and turn. At one point in the story the Beast passes out, I honestly can't remember why, and Belle has to hoist him onto the back of her horse. Now, the beastly Beast is maybe twice the size of petite Belle, yet she lifts him into the saddle with no problem at all. For me, this was just too much. Willing suspension of disbelief covers just so much ground and this was a yard too far, and I said so. Natalia, the more precocious of my two nieces came back with the perfect rejoinder:

"It's a CARTOON. The whole thing is unbelievable, that's the point!"

Disenchantment is not like the willing suspension of disbelief, the failure of which might make us question the plausibility of a Disney plot point or two, before we happily surrender ourselves to the magic of fantasy once again. No, disenchantment is serious stuff. Once a spell is broken it cannot exercise any more sway over the bewitched. For better or worse, you are free.

Doubtless, I should have anticipated this. After all, I was the one who named this blog Rituals of Disenchantment. Didn't I know what the outcome of my magic would be? Wasn't I the one who way back when (three months ago!) wrote:

"I've named this blog Rituals of Disenchantment because we all have to break the spell of silence that has been cast over the Siddha Yoga sangham if we are ever to become re-enchanted with this yoga again."

But, there is no re-enchantment. I'm here to tell you that once you've learned to think for yourself, once you feel free to apply your critical understanding to the claims, teachings and legends of Siddha Yoga, there is no going back. The unquestioning mind of a disciple is no longer yours to possess. You've eaten the apple, peeked behind the curtain, opened Pandora's box and now you have to deal with the plague of knowledge swirling around you.

It's midnight in the garden of good and evil, folks. Step right this way and enjoy yourselves the show!

What I have posted thus far of the message talk for 2008 has been seen as wholly negative by some readers. Oh, Christ, I wish I could maintain the balance that characterized my earlier posts. But, I can't. There is no way for me to view this message as anything other than a cynical ploy to keep good-hearted folk on the hook. This by way of warning for what's coming next. The thing is, I don't believe my perspective is the be all and end all. I actually welcome those of you who feel differently to tell your truth here. Not because I want to argue with you. No, far from it. I want to hear what you have to say because, having lost the certainty of belief, I'm still fascinated by it, it still exercises its fatal allure.

When what we had hoped for came to nothing... Part 3

2008-01-06T09:49:00.001-05:00

Play of Consciousness. Just hearing Gurumayi mention Baba's spiritual autobiography took me way back to the start of my sadhana. Like every good beginner Siddha Yogi I had bought a copy of the hard cover edition, the one with the picture of Baba in his "lion of ganeshpuri" shaktipat pose on the cover. I began to devour it immediately, but have to say I didn't finish it for a long time. SY was too new and there were just too many other books and talks to command my attention (interesting phrase, that). And Play of Consciousness, let's face it, is a tough read for those who have not yet developed the appetite for colorful yogic kriyas and abstruse Indian philosophy. In the first years of my sadhana, it was just too much.

Eventually, of course, I came around. You just couldn't NOT read it if you were serious about the path. For a time during the late eighties and early nineties it was mentioned in every course, every Intensive. I vividly remember sitting on the hillside overlooking Nityananda Lake during the Fire Course one summer night. The leaders of the course were selectively humiliating South Fallsburg ashram insiders under the guise of asking them 'fiery' questions about their sadhana. The rumor was that the swamis asking the tough questions were wearing hidden earphones, that it was really Gurumayi who was behind the 'tapasya'. Later, it came out that it had been George Afif on the other end of the microphone, settling old scores and maintaining his iron grip over the ashram. As a newcomer and 'short term retreat participant' I couldn't know any of this; I just bought the line that those 'closest to the Guru's fire' were burning up karma.

At some point the questions came addressed to the general assembly of course participants. "Who here is not afraid of dying?" was one of the first. When a smattering of souls raised their hands they were made to stand up; the bravest among them volunteered to be handed a mic and have their resolve tested. As each one explained the source of their fearlessness the leaders mocked them, exposed their flimsy devotional rationales, taunted them by saying that the Guru wouldn't be with them at the moment of their death. I remember this so well because my best friend at the time was one of the unfortunates. I ached for him, but wasn't fearless enough to stand up in his defense, only smart enough to keep my head down and not answer the next question—which was "Who here has not read Play of Consciousness?" Amazingly, people stood up to confess this lapse. You can imagine the abuse these 'seekers after the truth' were subjected to—they wanted to follow in Baba's footsteps and couldn't even be bothered to read his spiritual autobiography?

But the leaders were not finished with the rest of us. "Who has only read Play of Consciousness once? Stand up!" And then, of course, who has read it only twice? Three times? The point was hammered home with each fresh rank of failures, until nearly everybody was standing. Why hadn't we read the greatest book about sadhana ever written, over and over again? What obstinancy kept us from continually studying what was the sum and summation of Baba's spiritual knowledge and attainment! What kind of seekers were we?

Word of the Fire Course spread through the Siddha Yoga sangham like, well, like a wildfire. When the 25th anniversary edition of Play of Consciousness was subsequently published it was hard to find anyone at the ashram who didn't have a new copy tucked under their arm or open on their lap. I read it again and again. By this time I was better able to appreciate this strange book with its exotic accounts of Baba's night time meditations, when he would be visited by gods and goddesses who would take him with them to Siddha Loka, or the moon, or hell, like otherworldly tour guides. Some of the language was utterly beautiful. I remember one passage in particular in which Baba uncharacteristically couldn't remember what had taken place during his meditation, only that entering it was like floating on a black river beneath the silent gates of a dark city. The account of Baba's initiation by Bhagawan Nityananda was towering in its serene, majestic beauty. Whoever wrote Play of Consciousness (and speculation tends to run to Amma, Baba's personal assistant at the time, whose name, whose very existence, has been scrubbed from SY history) was a fantastically talented writer.

At that moment I was interrupted from my reverie and my attention turned back to the hall as I heard Gurumayi rushing on with her talk:

"Play of Consciousness. Chit Shakti Vilas. To describe the importance of meditation and spiritual practice, Swami Muktananda wrote what has become THE BOOK for those who want to pursue sadhana. On Baba's 100th birthday I'd like to bring your attention to the SY legacy. Baba Muktananda established the SY path as a living tradition for seekers of the truth around the world. Baba's mahaprasad, his supreme gift to us is the great legacy of essential SY teachings. These teachings are alive with divine grace, they are chaitanya, they have been infused with the guru's prana shakti, the guru's breath which is chaitanya."

As she spoke, Gurumayi repeated many words and entire phrases in Hindi, as if to give them added legitimacy, to stress that they come from outside the Western tradition and are unknowable to devotees unless the Guru translates them into terms we can understand. She went on to talk about how we have the teachings because of the way Baba undertook his sadhana, how he respected the teachings and guidance he received from his Guru, how he studied, practiced, assimilated and implemented the SY teachings.

And then she began a familiar practice, taking each word she had used to describe Baba's sadhana and giving its dictionary definition, but I was still thinking about Play of Consciousness. Why had she brought it up, only to immediately move on? Had the most important book in Siddha Yoga become nothing more than a throw-away line? Or was there something I was missing? Could this be one of those mysterious hints Gurumayi was so good about hiding in her talks--the kind that would become poured over and interpreted and re-interpreted during a year's worth of study sessions? If so, what did it mean?

Gurumayi was using the occasion of Baba's 100th birthday as a pretext to examine the origins and trace the lineage of Siddha Yoga, following the transmission of teachings and grace from Bhagawan NItyananda to Baba Muktananda to...who? Wouldn't it be natural to say that the transmission continued with her Guru-hood? Why this lacuna? Why stop at Baba's teachings as exemplified in his book Play of Consciousness, or, in its original name:

Chit Shakti Vilas

Chidvilasananda

Oh. right. I get it now. Bringing up the name of Baba's autobiography is a neat way for Gurumayi to remind us that Baba passed the lineage on to her, Swami Chidvilasananda, without having to deal with the messiness of narrating the actual succession drama, i.e. first her brother Nityananda is raised to the guru's chair by Baba, then she is installed as his co-successor and then, soon after Baba's death, the coup.

This sleight of hand has another purpose, it allows Gurumayi to simultaneously claim the Siddha Yoga Guruhood, and deftly sidestep it. Because when she retreats back out of the spotlight this taped message has briefly thrown on her to resume whatever life she is leading, her students will doubtless be told that this is an act of humility, that she wishes them to receive their instruction not from Chidvilasananda, but from their paid study of Chit Shakti Vilas.

When what we had hoped for came to nothing... Part 2

2008-01-05T21:17:00.000-05:00

I coaxed my mind away from its disappointment in the story of the ten dullard pilgrims, and turned it towards focusing on the point that tale was meant to illustrate:

"What do you habitually leave out of account when you take stock of your own world? Your own self, your own consciousness. That is the one that must be added to all the zeros, the one of the Self. "

In past years I would have agreed with this assessment without question. The Self? I didn't think about That nearly enough. Couldn't seem to keep That in the forefront of my waking consciousness for any extended length of time, and if I couldn't manage to maintain that practice for even a day or two, how was I ever going to become established in That State?

However, that's not what I was thinking when I heard Gurumayi say these words on New Year's Day. My immediate impression was that they weren't true for me anymore. I don't leave myself out of the consideration of my world! That world exists only in relation to my self, my consciousness, its perspectives, ideas, thoughts, judgments and beliefs.

Of course, I understand the distinction Gurumayi was trying to make between the (pure) self and the ego, I just don't believe in it anymore. When I thought there was a "capital S" self out there that I had to fight to relate to, it didn't eradicate my ego, it weakened it in ways that do not serve me as a person in the real world. It made me uncertain in my own skin. Now that I'm thinking for myself, without the mental gymnastics of having to align my everday thoughts and feelings with some unattainable ideal, I feel much more self-assured, calm and happy. In fact, in the past few months I've noticed a marked reevaluation in my assessment of myself. I feel more grounded in my beliefs, more able to articulate them and more certain of their truth, for me. If others disagree or contradict my truth, I not only don't get offended, I don't feel any need to argue the point. There is a quiet self-assurance that has grown up within me, maybe, probably, likely as a consequence of writing Rituals of Disenchantment and interacting with all those who have been moved to share their thoughts here.

In any case, there was no time to linger over the appreciation of this new estimation of my self worth. Gurumayi was again ecstatically wishing Baba a happy hundredth birthday! She exclaimed that if he were alive today ("in his physical body") Baba would announce to the whole world "I am 100 years old! I am a young man!" She shouted: "Can't you just hear him saying that?"

Now, I never met Baba. Never felt any particular connection to him, though I faithfully read all his books more than once, though I prostrated myself with abject abandon at the foot of his altar in the back of the main hall in South Fallsburg, watching mesmerized as the eyes of his picture would follow me back to my seat during each Intensive. So, when I would hear Gurumayi paint word pictures of him like this in the past I would just smile knowingly, confident that anyone who had met Baba or spent any time with him would be able to envision the scene precisely as she described it. But since that time I have read many more first-hand accounts of devotees' experience with Baba, and have had to come to terms with the well-chronicled instances of his sexual abuse of minors, and the violent tactics certain of his followers used to silence those who tried to protect the innocent. So now, this picture of a Perfected Master that I had always accepted without question was replaced in my mind's eye by one of a Perfect Bastard. Toothless, impotent, I saw Baba pushing his flaccid way into young female devotees, just girls really, as they turned their faces blankly away from the sight of his ecstasy, trying to will away the memories that are already sinking roots into their bodies like cancer.

Gurumayi continued with her fantasy of a live (in his physical body!) Baba having as much fun on his birthday as a ten year old. There would be laughter and food, singing and meditation. (I thought dryly, like there used to be in South Fallsburg when we actually gathered together as one to celebrate Siddha Yoga holy days?) Baba might even hold a year-long Shaktipat Intensive! The day would ring with Baba's characteristic phrases (Gurumayi repeats some of these in Hindi, without translation) And as Baba would always do during a satsang as part of a story, or for emphasis, or to quiet the room when loud kriyas were happening...

she taps the microphone slowly five times and repeats

shanti shanti shanti

Then Gurumayi asks: why is Baba's birthday so significant for us? It is a time to remember and reflect on what he so lovingly taught us. The Self is immortal. The Guru is immortal. The Self, God and the Guru are one. As we celebrate this anniversary of 100 years we are at the same time celebrating Baba's boundless love, Baba's all-pervading shakti, Baba's immeasurable grace and Baba's eternal teachigns.

Baba is immortal! she declares. She repeats this in Hindi. In fact, English and Hindi have alternated throughout this talk in a way I can't remember since I took an Intensive in Gurudev Siddha Peeth. And then Gurumayi begins to sing Jay Jay Muktanandaya! Muktananda Jay Jay! The musicians pick up the melody and play it for a few bars, just long enough for us to begin listlessly to follow along. And then, abruptly, the chant ends and I hear her say those three words.

Play of Consciousness.

Chit Shakti Vilas.

to be continued

When what we had hoped for came to nothing...

2008-01-05T15:12:00.000-05:00

Of all the ways to study Siddha Yoga, I've always loved listening to Gurumayi's talks the most. I bought each one on CD or video as soon as it was available, and listened to it over and over again with rapt attention. It got to be that I had so memorized the rhythm and cadence of her speech, so internalized the darkly lush intonations of her voice, the plum-like fullness of her syllables, the exquisite clarity of her enunciation and, of course, the warm springs of her laughter that I could hear her reciting her talks even when I'd read them in books.

When the tradition of the annual Siddha Yoga message was established, what had been a glorious, overgrown profusion of Gurumayi's talks each year was tamed into a single coherent focus of study. Most years I made the pilgrimage to South Fallsburg to listen to the New Year's Message at her feet. And over the years I began to develop a curious ability. I knew that there would be a delay of at least two months before the recorded version of the talk would be available and, not wanting to miss practicing the full import of the message during those important first weeks of the year, I found a way to memorize whole passages of the talk. It didn't involve note-taking, a practice which I discovered early on divided my attention and reduced the talk to discrete fragments of whatever seemed important in the moment, leaving large gaps and destroying the coherence of the message.

Instead, I would sit comfortably and pay extremely close attention to every word, not allowing my attention to wander for even a moment to think about what Gurumayi had just said, but rather let her words sink into me like water running into a bed of hot sand. It didn't matter that the words would vanish from my short term memory almost as quickly as she spoke them. If I listened in this way and allowed the message to permeate me, then there was a good chance I could race away the moment the talk was over and write most of it down in my journal. In this way, I was able to capture whole segments of the talk, and even direct quotes of the points Gurumayi had stressed through repetition or particular emphasis. Nowadays I look on this ability as something of a parlor trick, but at the time I was proud of it, and when I'd gather with friends afterwards at amrit to compare mental notes on what Gurumayi had said and exactly how she said it, I was happy to be able to remember so much, in so much detail.

I approached this New Year's Message broadcast in the same way, hoping to recapture the same depth of attention and focus and retention. Consider this my experience talk of that effort.

My concentration was tested from the start when the broadcast began with the MC, Navritti Gillet, introducing himself as "a long term retreat participant" at South Fallsburg. Full disclosure; I've always disliked Navritti Gillet. He's never done anything to me; I've never even had a private conversation with the man, but he has always struck me as unctuous and transparently false. His voice has the self-satisfied tone of someone who has spent a great deal of time listening to himself speak, and is in love with what he's heard. But, it was that term: "long term retreat participant" that set my teeth on edge. Really? Are we really still talking about So Fallsburg in this way? What retreat is going on there?

OK, breathe. Shake it off. It isn't him you've come to hear, I reminded myself. Banish the image of his absurd little moustache from your mind and concentrate on the message that is coming. After all, you've waited so long for this. You're expecting so much. There are so many questions you have that you're certain will be answered. You're going to hear Gurumayi!

And, I remembered, I did have such high hopes for this talk. I felt sure that the Guru who had admonished us over and again "Never break another human heart, because it is in the heart that God dwells" would surely have something to say to those whose hearts have been broken after four years without any word from their Beloved. The teacher who had stressed that the ashram is the extended body of the Guru, and who had once asked everyone in the worldwide sangham to write an essay about what the ashram meant to them, would doubtless speak about the state of our beloved South Fallsburg ashram and the plans for its future. The Disciple who had shared so much of her own sadhana to illustrate the teachings would certainly have something to say about her experiences of the last four years, and how they have colored and shaped her understanding of the Truth.

And then Navritti was introducing the speaker by saying that "Our teacher today for the New Year's Message will be none other than our beloved Guru, Gurumayi!" I wished then that I hadn't read the comment from the devotee in Australia who had spilled the beans on the "sweet surprise" on New Year's eve (already New Year's Day down under). I imagined the wave of excitement that must have swept across the globe when the introductory mantras began and it was Gurumayi's unmistakable voice leading the chant. And then:

With great respect and love, I welcome you all with all my heart.

Hearing her pronounce those words, something felt...missing. Perhaps, I told myself, it's just that I'm not in the hall seeing her, truly being with her. But it wasn't that. I've heard Gurumayi's voice over broadcasts, both live and taped, many times before but it was always with the awareness that she was speaking in a hall filled with people. You could hear the rustling and coughing and laughing of the devotees fortunate enough to be there with her, and it helped to crystallize the scene. This always left me with a sense of longing and envy and even with the delicious feeling of eavesdropping on history in the making. But her voice now was shrouded by a mysterious silence. I had the uncomfortable sense that she was alone and speaking into a telephone line that communicated only one way.

My unease only increased when Gurumayi wished everyone a happy new year, by saying:"You've all come together in your satasang halls to hear the "sweet surprise"! So, please take a minute to wish each other a happy new year, and if you happen to be by yourself, wish yourself a very happy new year." She lifted her voice to emphasize the second syllable of 'surprise' in a way that made the word sound like baby-talk, and then the music began-- a jaunty up and down melody like the one on that game show Jeopardy, that is meant to count down a short passage of time.

When the music ended a gong sounded three or four times to signal us to return to our seats. Gurumayi then explained "when you hear the gong, it means the sharing session is complete. Everytime you hear the gong it means we are wrapping up a session of the satsang." This was so unnecessary and forced that it threw the rhythm off and only underscored the fact that we weren't in contact with her, no one was in contact with her, she was delivering the message into a sound-proof booth.

But, I reminded myself, haven't we been conditioned in SY to things changing all the time? Isn't that part of the practice of sadhana, doesn't it help us to let go of preconditioned ideas and be in the moment? I refocused on Gurumayi's words just as she was beginning to tell a story....

"Once upon a time there lived a great being. He was a great Guru. He had attained liberation. He was well known for his divine ability to give shaktipat, the awakening of kundalini shakti. In our time it was he who made shaktipat known to the whole world. HIs name was Swami Muktananda. We called him Baba. He was born in 1908 and now 100 years later in 2008 we are celebrating Baba's 100th birthday. 100 years! Happy birthday Baba! Do you want to wish him happy birthday? Go ahead! Happy birthday Baba!"

Gurumayi began to repeat her happy birthday salutations in Hindi as I somewhat nervously wondered if we were all supposed to join in. But before anyone could, Gurumayi continued:

"Without the number one, zeroes add up to nothing, Baba would say. Everything is zero, indicating it is meaningless, without...without what exactly?"

Suddenly a sweep of musical chimes, like the one used to signify pixie dust being sprinkled in the telling of fairy tales, marked the beginning of a story. Gurumayi then told the tale of the ten pilgrims who were crossing a river. When they made it to the other side they counted up to be sure no one was missing. But to their horror there were only nine of them! The story continued as one after another seeker completed the count and found only nine, until they all were weeping. A farmer heard them, asked what was wrong and then suggested they count again. In the middle of the recount he stopped them and suggested they they begin the count with themselves. Lo an behold there were ten of them after all! Each had forgotten to count himself!

Gurumayi continued by saying that Baba would tell this story to illustrate that without the number one, everything is zero. "What do you habitually leave out of account when you take stock of your own world? Your own self, your own consciousness. That is the one that must be added to all the zeros, the one of the Self. That gives life its rasa."

Again, for me, something wasn't quite right. I soon realized what it was. In the past when I would listen to Gurumayi's recorded talks over and over there were always passages that I inevitably began to skip over. These were almost always the stories. After repeated listenings the stories always seemed drawn out, way too long to justify the point they were meant to illustrate. Sure, when I first heard each story I LOVED it. And when I listened on tape everyone was laughing along with Gurumayi as she narrated with exaggerated silliness the folly of whoever was being taught a lesson because of their obstinacy or blindness. But it was clear to me that the magic of a Gurumayi story didn't translate as well to a recording as the rest of her talk. It was a meant for a live audience, a chance for Gurumayi to really roll up her sleeves and put on a performance that would delight her listeners. And that was the trouble here. There was no crowd to react to the story, no roar of laughter to punctuate the punch lines, no interaction at all. And yet, the story was written as if it was going to be performed before a live audience of thousands.

In the absence of feedback from an audience the story of the ten pilgrims seemed terribly belabored. Perhaps to compensate, Gurumayi raised the volume on her theatrics until they seemed shrill and histrionic. For me, the story didn't serve to set up the Baba quote at all. It was like trying to extract a personal lesson from the misunderstandings of a gathering of idiots.

to be continued

The Siddha Yoga Message for 2008 is...

2008-01-01T19:43:00.001-05:00

OK. I'm not made out of wood. When a commenter from Australia revealed that the 2008 message talk would be given by Gurumayi herself, well, I just had to sign up.

I'd LOVE to tell you the message; I'm DYING to tell you the message. It's a message everyone MUST hear right away.

There's just one itty-bitty problem. At my center they made everyone promise not to talk about or reveal the message until after February 15. What's so auspicious about this date, you ask? Dunno. But I'm guessing it's the last day you can pay to sign up and hear the message via webcast.

In other words; pony up one hundred bills, or remain in the dark regarding the first message personally given by Gurumayi since 2004. But, here's the dillio! Once I collect myself from the shock of again hearing Gurumayi's divine voice (even via pre-recorded tape) I promise to share with you my 'experience' of the talk.

Stay tuned, gentle readers.

2 out of 3 vote for a New Year's No Show

2007-12-31T16:14:00.000-05:00

In the closing hours of our online poll, 74 respondents have voted so far, with 67% saying they don't expect a message from Gurumayi to be the advertised "sweet surprise" in store for the 2008 New Year's Message.

If you haven't yet cast your vote, this is your last chance. Poll closes at the stroke of midnight, EST. The poll can be found on the right hand margin of "Rituals" homepage.

I promise to reveal what the surprise actually was, as soon as I can persuade someone who spent $100 to hear it, to tell it to me for free.

Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

SEEKHER

I'll be wrapped around your finger

2007-12-25T16:25:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting on my living room couch feeling like a small-time pot dealer, facing an ottoman stacked with messy piles of twenties, tens and fives. But instead of a fat blunt, I'm enjoying a glass or three of cheap champagne, and rather than counting my weekly take I'm doling out the annual Christmas bonuses for my apartment building staff. I prefer to get this done before Christmas so the boys can do their shopping, but this year I'm late. Which kinda takes some of the joy out of it for me. So I open a bottle of Comte de Gascogne and ride the elevator down with three flutes in hand, to share a toast to Christmas with my favorite doormen. And now I'm back with the balance of the bottle.

It's ridiculous that liquor stores are closed by law on Christmas day in the U.S. (the only day of the year that we're like Europe, where everything's locked up tighter than a Spanish virgin for yuletide.) I'd like another glass of holiday cheer, but the bottle's empty and I didn't plan ahead. Or, rather, I did. Planned not to drink alone on Christmas. Planned not to feel lonely, too. Well, as my Grandma used to say when things didn't quite go her way..."plans of mice and men."

Didn't Gurumayi once quote one of the Sufi poets, Rumi or Hafiz, in a talk in which she riffed on the theme "let your loneliness cut more deep"? I didn't hear that talk first hand, but got the download soon afterward from my friend Kathy and, the next time I was at S. Fallsburg ashram, I bought a volume of Hafiz--yes, it was Hafiz, I remember now--hoping to read the poem that Gurumayi had quoted from. Except that I got the wrong collection of his poetry.

It wasn't until years later, in 2005, that I finally read the source poem. I was at Burning Man, the annual arts festival/survivalist camp in the Nevada desert, sitting in an authentic Navajo tent erected by a wonderfully odd caucasian woman who lived her intense attachment to indigenous culture, surrounded by camp mates who had taken refuge from the stultifying midday heat. I'd brought a bottle of chilled white wine to share, and a beautiful young woman from San Francisco brought out "The Subject Tonight is Love", another volume of Hafiz' poetry. We passed around the wine and the book, taking turns drinking and reading aloud. When it came my turn I opened the slim paperback at random and began reading:

"Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear."

I felt something like a mixture of joy and longing then, and my voice broke with emotion as I read. Of course, I was a little drunk (like Hafiz!) and quite probably dehydrated as well. Still, although Gurumayi had already gone missing for over a year by then, I experienced the old tug of attachment and wondered, what made her choose that passage as a basis for her talk? What was she trying to tell us, or more likely, reveal about herself?

A few days later, just after the climactic event of the week when the giant wooden effigy of "the Man" was burned, I was walking across the great expanse of desert known as the playa, hand in hand with my friend who had brought the book of Hafiz. As we walked she twisted her hand in mine for warmth and, a moment later, my right ring finger suddenly felt naked. Snatching my hand away I realized with panic that my Gurumayi signature ring was gone.

(That particular ring was precious to me; I'd acquired it during the years when the bookstore went all out to commission works of real beauty. It had twin pillars on its face surmounted by Gurumayi's signature, elegantly carved in Devanagari script against a delicately worked field of wavering gold, like a field of wheat shimmering in the sun.)

I grabbed for a flashlight and began sweeping it back and forth across the desert floor. But I knew almost immediately it was useless. Nothing is more disorienting than the desert at night, absent light or fixed points of reference. We could have been just feet away from where the ring fell and searched all night without finding it.

Still, I persisted and roped my friends into the effort as well. They were game, although my despair at losing the ring was harshing everyone's post-burn emotional high. Eventually, reluctantly, I called off the search and we all trooped off together in the direction of one of the dancing pavillions. As we were locking up our bikes and stashing anything we didn't need to dance, I remembered Gurumayi saying "If you lose something, let it go. Your karma with that object is over. It belongs to someone else now, and will bring them blessings."

I looked down on the desert floor and spotted...a penny. Which was extraordinary because money is superfluous at Burning Man. Nothing outside of coffee and ice can be bought or sold, and those only during a few hours each morning. It is the one place where you can lose your wallet and never miss it. The entire camp is run on a "gift economy": If there is something you want or need that you didn't pack in with you, just ask. Someone will have it and gladly give it to you, and visa versa.

As I've written before, whenever I'd find a coin on the ground I used to take it as a sign that my thoughts in that moment were blessed by the Guru. I later came to abjure such "magical thinking," but in that moment I believed and surrendered the ring to the desert with something akin to equanimity.

I never replaced that ring. I told myself that the bookstore was only offering pale imitations, but it was something more. I'd remembered that this was not the first Guru ring I'd lost. In 1994, close to the seventh anniversary of my Diva Diksha, I was playing in the surf off Long Island with my dog, Rama. As I clapped my hands to get him more and more excited, my ring flew off my finger and slipped beneath the waves. I dove again and again, frantically searching for it, but of course, it was gone, swallowed up by the ocean as completely as my next ring would be by the desert. I shouldn't have been wearing it in the water, I reprimanded myself. But, the truth was, I never removed that ring. It was, for me, as precious as a wedding ring. I'd brought it up to Gurumayi in darshan and asked her to put it on me, and when she asked which finger I gave her the ring finger of my right hand. Any time I thought of her and wanted to send her my love, I'd kiss the blue enamel signature set into its band of gold. It got to be that I'd do that so often that my boyfriend would joke: "Stop making out with your ring, already."

If something leaves you, let it go. This was the second time the natural world conspired to rob me of this token of fealty to the Guru, and this time I began to wonder if it wasn't for the best. If it wasn't a sign that the union I celebrated by wearing those rings was, finally, over.

Something is still missing in my heart, tonight. But it hasn't made my longing for God more clear. It hasn't done anything as simple as that.

I Am Grateful For These

2007-12-09T21:26:00.000-05:00

K, you've got me started thinking. Thank you for that. I recognize that the list of things you loved about SY and now miss terribly is a litany of loss. I have my own litany; we all do. But, there are other things I have to acknowledge that I take with me. Herewith a partial list of those:

1. When I see someone on the street, or subway, and I'm tempted to have a judgment about them at first sight, I stop. Reflexively, I think: "they, too, are God." I don't claim to know what this means. It might mean nothing at all. But, it brings my judgment up short. Usually. And sometimes I even walk away with a renewed sense of the common dignity we all share, and I find myself wishing that person well.

2. I no longer think of myself as a sinner. In fact, the idea strikes me as absurd. For someone raised in the Roman Catholic tradition this is...a radical change in self-concept. To no longer have a majority of my inner life consumed with calculations over degrees of guilt, negotiations between venial and mortal sins and the need for confession, repentance, forgiveness, penance... this is immense. For me.

3. I can meditate. I can fall into a steady posture and quiet my thoughts and plunge inside. I don't anymore. But I trust that I still can. Like riding a bike, it's something you don't forget. My body remembers the posture, my mind remembers the mantra. Meditation was a refuge for me, a sweet surcease from the incessant demands of the world. I hope I can find it again.

--------------------------
Oh, God. This is hard. Because when taking account of those things I'm grateful for as a result of my practice of SY, many things crowd forward to be acknowledged, and I have to reluctantly dismiss them. For instance, what did it mean that we would smile at one another over chai before the Guru Gita, our eyes shining with joy, and silently acknowledge each other's state, which was really our shared state of bliss, of unaltered happiness? What was the unsaid connection we felt in those early morning hours at South Fallsburgh amrit? A common ecstasy produced by our united good thoughts, intentions, feelings, wishes? Or, the muted glow that junkies pass around with a lazy smile and tired nod?
-----------------------------------

4. I've met and befriended people in SY whose goodness takes my breath away. Friends whose purity of heart and intention I've never had cause to question. (I'm thinking of Nina, Iwona, Kathy, Stephan and Anne, Willa, and George, my George...) A few people have even expressed the same opinion of me. Something about this path invoked that in each of us. Yes, this was abused. This unquestioning, trusting goodness was exploited. That was...evil. But, it doesn't take away what I've seen and loved in others. And now, I know what to look for. I trust that this is there, in anyone I would call a friend. I guess I believe that at their core, most people are good.

5. I find it much easier to forgive. Not because I've become a more forgiving person, but because many of the small transgressions we all traffic in every day no longer seem so important to me. Has my ego shrunk? Not likely. I like my ego nice and strong these days. It just has a tougher shell. Guess all that knocking around had it's silver lining, after all.

6. I can talk about spirituality with others in this unmediated medium of the internet, and know that we all share unspoken assumptions and common beliefs and a language which, though corrupted, frames our experiences in ways we all understand. This is not, I realize, a direct product of SY practice (which officially circumscribed such unofficial dialogue, lest anyone start comparing notes and realize that the gig was up) It is, rather, an unintended and quite wonderful bi-product of our practice. Still, it could not have been possible without the intense, shared experience of the "laboratory of the Shakti" that was SY.

7. I know enough not to give my heart away again for a few hits of Shakti and a flashing blue pearl. I now know that my heart belongs entirely to me. In an ironic, sad way I finally understand the teaching that god dwells within my own heart, as me. Ironic, because the one who gave me this teaching sought to claim my heart as her own. Sad, because so many years have passed and, dazzled by the outward show, I've never made any serious attempt to claim the treasure within. But, at least I know it is there.

Well, this is a start. It is a benchmark of sorts, for me. You can't begin picking among the ashes for those few things that are left to you until you've accepted that there has been a fire. A really bad fire.

Please! Have at me with your comments. I'm feeling kinda open and vulnerable and susceptible to whatever comes my way. That's one thing we were never encouraged to feel in SY, n'est-ce pas?

PS Zennie. Start your blog! Please. There are so many correspondences between the yoga we practiced and addiction. I look forward to hearing what you have to say on this subject, and others as well.

Is she? Or isn't she? Only her hairdresser and speechwriters know for sure!

2007-12-04T21:19:00.001-05:00

SYDA has announced that those who attend the New Year's Day global audio satsang will receive "A Sweet Surprise". Speculation runs rampant along two lines:

Is Gurumayi going to reappear and give the Siddha Yoga Message for 2008?

Or, is the "sweet surprise" we have in store an "all day sucker" handed out as prasad?

Scroll over to the right and cast your vote in "Rituals" first-ever poll! Who knows? Maybe someone "sweet" is watching and waiting for us to say we expect her back!

PS. Apologies for the irreverence of this post. But, as we've all been toyed with for going on four years as to whether G will make a showing, I find a healthy sense of humor invaluable. Feel free to disagree in the comments to this post. But vote first! Believe me, South Fallsburgh is watching.

The Spectrum of Our Beliefs

2007-12-01T23:45:00.000-05:00

"One thing that I have on mind, am I the only reader of this blog who is, as of today, skeptical of these abuses? Can I also ask you, Seekher, your opinion about this serious matter (if you feel comfortable about writing it)? I think it would be quite good to have more feedbacks.

Pp"
-----------------------------------

I've been following the thread of comments to my last post with great interest but not much free time; which is just as well. I prefer to hear a number of opinions and voices speak on this indelicate, central, alleged, irrefutable, supposed matter of abuse. I characterize it with this string of antonyms because that seems to sum up the main points of contention in both camps.

Here's what I'd like to say. There is only one camp and we are all in it together. Like Anon 70 and others who have contributed to this thread, I feel there are only degrees of belief and disbelief—whether in the infallibility of the Guru, or in the culpability of SY leaders. This spectrum contains all the colors and shades of our collective belief system. And it is possible to move back and forth between them. In fact, it is required.

When I first began looking on the Internet for information about SY a few years ago, I happened on a message board that contained postings from an angry and disillusioned community of people who had self-identified as having left SY. It appalled and fascinated me. Never before had I experienced people voicing such passionate, forbidden dissent from the "official line" of SY. I joined the LSY group as an anonymous "lurker" and read for a few days, then abruptly discontinued my membership. Later, I told a friend that the act of having read there had "cratered my devotion." I now more fully understand what I meant—having accessed that forum I could no longer see the Guru in a universally beneficent, wholly good light (and what was the nature of devotion in Siddha Yoga if not nursing and nurturing these very feelings about the Guru?)

Much of what I read at LSY felt venomous, particularly to someone who was accustomed to following the "never a discouraging word" discourse of the ashram. Still, I harbored doubts about the Guru for the first time in my life. What I wanted more than anything was to shut those doubts down as quickly as possible. I had read enough online to know that anyone who posted at LSY saying that they were still "in" SY would not be welcome. Faced with choosing the path I knew and loved and had followed for years, or reaching out to a group of (I thought at the time) often bitter, sometimes hostile people, I chose to ignore my doubts and renew my practice.

I might have been successful at that for my whole life, had Gurumayi not disappeared. I've written here that the last time I saw her was at the 2004 message talk in South Fallsburgh: "Experience the Power Within. Kundalini Shakti." I loved that message more than all the others. I felt that Gurumayi was returning to the roots of our tradition, and I welcomed the renewed focus on the Goddess with the attendant release of Gurumayi's Kundalini Stavaha chanting CD, a chant I had become enamored with years before after reading a slim volume of Baba's commentary on it, that the foundation had subsequently let go out of print.

But what I thought was a renewal began to seem more and more like a farewell, as the years passed and no news of Gurumayi was forthcoming. More disturbing, I felt that my connection to the inner Guru had been severed. Despite trying to maintain devotion through my spiritual practices they seemed dry, or more to the point, unnecessary. As many have noted in their comments here, I was a bhakta, and Gurumayi was the focus of my devotional life, the object of my contemplations, meditations and chanting. I never had any trouble summoning up a mental image of her, or remembering how she had caressed a particular teaching with her exquisite phrasing, enunciating it perfectly in her inimitable, darkly lush, spellbinding voice.

No more. I felt Gurumayi slipping away--something that in the past would have filled me with such unease that I would instantly redouble my practices. For years I had thought of myself as being like a dog on a chain that Gurumayi held in her hands. The chain was very long, and she let me wander very far but at some point I'd reach the end with a yank and be called home. (Strange now to think that this was a comforting image, me as a pet of the Guru, but it was.) Now the pole that that tethered me to my center was gone.

Eventually, I don't know why or how, I became angry too. Not because I knew or believed anything about abuse in SY, or financial mismanagement, or instances of crushing cruelty, or because I felt that staff members were being exploited. No, I became angry for a very selfish and very human reason: I had been told and sold a lifelong connection with a spiritual teacher, who was abruptly MIA. I was angry at the conjecture I heard at the ashram and centers that Gurumayi had withdrawn herself as a teaching to find the Guru within. I was angry that there were no straight answers as to where she was, or if and when she would return. People I ran into who had recently been to SF told me she was in India. People I ran into who had come from India said, no, she is in SF. For once, the official line from SYDA management was not damage control, or spin, or a comforting platitude, but only complete silence.

If Gurumayi had withdrawn for a time, or even permanently, in order to shut down the cult of personality that had grown up around her like poisonous weeds, and which was strangling her devotees' true practice of the teachings—why not state so? Why not have one last global message and deliver the healing blow to everyone in the worldwide sangham at once? Why the secrecy and silence? Why the privileged access to (mis)information that in retrospect, always characterized communication in SY, i.e. an inner circle knows everything, they communicate the official line to "higher ups" in ashrams and centers, who read it as an announcement in programs or, in this case, keep it a secret and say nothing at all?

So, I began this blog. To break the silence and get some answers. Soon after I took that step I realized that I could now visit LSY and read there with detachment, objectively seeking truth about all the stories that had been hinted at for years. I ignored the message boards of exSY'ers and read the archives which were first gathered by Pendragon and are now maintained by Daniel Shaw. Many of the first-hand experiences there are highly personal, but still moving accounts of people who lived at the ashram, or were close to the inner circle, and who had left after becoming disillusioned by what they saw. These were not accounts that chronicled abuse or crimes that would convince a skeptic. I considered them carefully but read on.

I soon found other accounts that were much more objectively incriminating. I link to the pages that contain those testimonies here for the convenience of those who would like to read and consider the information under discussion. For those who have already read these and considered them, I ask your patience—they must be a sad and repetitive litany. Others perhaps might find these links useful in navigating the chronologically unorganized archives of LSY testimony and evidence.

The first account I took very seriously was the letter of resignation Swami Abhayananda sent to Muktananda in 1981. I found it to be a heart-wrenching statement from someone who had given his life to a cause he now felt he had to renounce, because his personal investigations had led him to discover testimony from long time SY insiders, whom he knew and personally trusted, as to the abuse they experienced and witnessed, including threats of violence from members of Muktananda's inner circle. That document can be found here:

http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/abhayananda.htm

Next I read an article published two years later, in 1983, by William Rodarmor in CoEvolution Quarterly. The article documented the same instances of abuse and physical threats and, significantly, implicated Malti as one of the insiders who counseled girls who had been abused by warning them to keep silent. The magazine independently contacted the individuals behind the accusations made in the article and verified their testimony (while the accusations were denied by SYDA, neither the magazine nor the author were sued for libel by the foundation, a fact I personally find significant.) That article, and an accompanying commentary from Abhayananda can be read here:

http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/secret.htm

The article in CQ appeared during the turbulent period just before Muktananda's death, in which he installed first Nityananda as his sole successor, then Chidvilasanda some months later as his co-successor. Like other devotees who joined SY after the succession drama was resolved in favor of Gurumayi, I knew little or nothing of what went on at that time. That changed when I read Sarah Caldwell's scholarly account of those years, in which she attempted to reconcile "two apparently contradictory theses: namely that Swami Muktananda (1908-1982) was an enlightened teacher and practitioner of an esoteric form of Tantric sexual yoga, and that he also engaged in actions that were not ethical, legal, or liberatory with many disciples."

I found this fascinating and beautifully written work very convincing, precisely because it was penned by a devotee who was a first-hand witness to the events that unfolded, and who was trying to find a way to accept them as legitimate without justifying what she knew to be abuse, so that she could maintain her faith in the path. Interestingly, Caldwell's account has been criticized not by SYDA, but by exSY people who note that she was a devotee of (the then exiled) Nityananda's when she wrote the piece, and therefore, compelled to rehabilitate Baba's reputation because the legitimacy of her own Guru hung in the balance.

Her article can be read here:

http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/pdf/10.1525/nr.2001.5.1.9

Permit me a diversion to provide some personal background. I joined SY in 1987, after the sex scandals and succession drama had receded into the background. Sure, there were whispers, but the people I heard them from on the "inside" dismissed the allegations as baseless, while those on the "outside" who brought these things up I discounted as jealous, or just not "yogic". It would be seven years before I had to seriously question that attitude, but that day did come with the publication of Lis Harris' article in The New Yorker, "Oh, Guru, Guru, Guru" in 1994. I was a serious devotee by that time, having spent weeks out of every of summer in SF doing Intensive seva, and having gone on tour with Gurumayi in Italy, Germany and Poland, as well as taking numerous sevas at my local center. When the article appeared my seva supervisor, a woman with an amazing heart and mind that I trusted without question and whom I still respect greatly, urged all her sevites to read the article and make up their own minds. That impressed me; I had expected a blanket edict to avoid reading it. She even passed out copies. That moved me to read it. The thing is, I had worked at The New Yorker during this period of my life. I knew the integrity of the magazine and its iron-clad rules about fact-checking and verifying sources. This was no sensational tabloid cover story. This was an exhaustively researched, thoroughly documented account of violence, blackmail, sexual abuse and rape within the highest levels of SY leadership. It can be read here:

http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/SYDA-Yoga/leave.txt

I read it and I ignored it. Basically, I told myself: "it's not my experience." I took refuge in my experiences, I contemplated them, I took more Intensives to see if the Shakti would still be there, still be strong for me and it was. I knew people, good people who were dropping away and I felt bad for them. I still loved them in my heart, still wished them well, prayed that they would find the grace to return again.

One of the fallouts of the NYer article was the founding of the online community LSY, in which people who had left SY could converse, compare notes and cross-check each other's stories for the first time. As part of this effort to construct a chronology of abuse, the founder of that forum, Pendragon, repeatedly petitioned Swami Abhayanada to issue a follow-up statement confirming the allegations he had made years earlier in his letter of resignation. He eventually consented (though even Abhayanada was put-off by Pendragon's "suspicious and combative" tone.) This letter goes into more detail about the events surrounding his departure and the abuse of young women he heard about first hand. The letter can be found here:

http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/abhayananda_st.htm

As the online community grew in numbers and as the corporate structure of SY began to decline in power, some of those who were abused felt confident enough to tell their stories first-hand. Joan Radha Bridges posted her story of sexual abuse at the hands of Baba Muktananda only after reading LSY for years. It can be read here:

http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/Radha_story.htm

Other accounts substantiate the sexual abuse of devotees at the hands of George Afif and Ram Butler, trusted heads of SY organization and teachings. But I won't post links for these here. If you've read the links above you've done enough homework to decide what you believe and what is right for you. No, you don't have to become an expert in "cults" to come to a decision about SY's dirty laundry. But, if you're reading here at all it seems you want to explore and find the truth out for yourself.

This post is really a continuation of the discussion begun in the long thread of comments left to my last post. It's neither an essay, nor a considered statement about one or another aspect of Siddha Yoga culture, teachings or practices. I do intend to return to those. But it seems we have gathered here a community of people who are in various stages of coming to grips with what SY was and where it is now. The links I've included here are merely things I've read that I've found helpful in doing just that.

To answer your question, Pp, that I appended at the beginning of this post; no, you are not the only reader who is skeptical that serious abuses occurred in SY. Many others share your apprehension and doubt. Unfortunately, after studying all the evidence linked to here, and more, I can no longer count myself among that number.

So, after reading all this you might ask—do I consider myself to be "in" or "out" of Siddha Yoga?

My answer would have to be: Yes.

Looking forward to all of your responses and comments.

Pennies from Heaven

2007-11-22T10:16:00.001-05:00

I set up this blog and first posted just over five weeks ago. In that time I've thought more about Gurumayi and Siddha Yoga than I have in years. I think. The problem is, when I actively practiced SY (for seventeen plus years) it was such a part of my mindset that when I drifted away (I never really "stopped") I reflexively continued to inhabit the same thought patterns. So, even when I wasn't consciously thinking of SY, I was thinking like a Siddha Yogi. The Guru I had welcomed into my heart had taken up residence in my head and wasn't disposed to leave, even after the love had gone and she herself had vanished.

For example; I once heard Gurumayi talk about her days as Baba's translator, how he would race off in those early morning hour in Ganeshpuri and she would have to run to keep up. One morning as she was running after him she spotted a one rupi note on the ground, but didn't take the moment to stoop and pick it up. Soon afterwards, she lost a one-hundred rupi note. I don't remember if Muktananda told her this, or if she did the math herself, but the point of Gurumayi's story was that money is Shakti, and you must respect it, or risk losing it. So, she continued, even if you see a penny in the street, bend down and pick it up, see it as Laksmi, put in on your puja at home and worship it as a manifestation of divine energy.

Of course, I took this as one of the Commands From The Guru that everyone was always so keen on getting. I began picking up coins off the street. Because I was always contemplating in those days, particularly when I was out walking, finding a penny quickly became a sign for me that whatever I had been thinking in relation to Gurumayi, or the path, the moment before I saw the coin was affirmed by the Shakti. I would lovingly pick the shiny penny up, repeat "Mahalaksmi Namostute" to myself and secretly smile as I slipped it into a separate pocket from my other change. Sometimes I would find a nickel or dime, maybe even a quarter, and these were particularly strong signs that the Guru knew what I was thinking and was blessing those thoughts with her support. Now, you may be quick to point out that Gurumayi didn't teach me this particular species of magical thinking. She never said, in public or private, that coins found in the street while contemplating were a sign of her grace. But, she did say that not picking a coin up was dissing the Shakti in such a way that it could come back to haunt you. In other words, a different kind of magical thinking. And there were so many of these in Siddha Yoga talks; "even a leaf falling from a tree can hold a mystical teaching for you, if you know how to look", etc. ad infinitum.

I liked this feedback loop that occurred in my contemplations and always rejoiced when I picked up a penny, even if it was dirty or in a puddle. Sometimes I really had to force myself to do it, especially if the coin was particularly nasty looking, as if it had been discarded by a homeless person. I didn't put those coins on my puja; sometimes they stayed in my jeans for a wash cycle before being liberated. Of course, I wasn't always contemplating the teachings when I picked them up; but I always re-traced my mental steps and felt better about whatever thought I was having at the time.

Eventually, I stopped doing even that, but still continued to pick up pennies and say my mantra to Laksmi anyway. Not because I thought it was a sign from the Guru, or that I would offend the Shakti if I didn't. It became a superstitious practice, like not walking under a ladder, or making the sign against the evil eye when passing by a church with red doors. In this, and in a million other ways, my thoughts remained stained by the sustained practice of years of contemplation.

What is contemplation as practiced in Siddha Yoga? Is it basting your experiences in the rasa of the teachings? Is it applying the teachings to every facet of your life? Is it a self-identification with the Guru that seeks to erase your small self and unfold your true Self? Or, is it a form of self-administered mind control? A closed mental loop that always deposits you back in the same place. A recipe that, whatever the ingredients, always ends up tasting exactly the same:

"Take one worrisome event in your life, or inconvenient fact about Siddha Yoga or the Guru. Add the first passage you find when randomly opening one of Gurumayi's or Baba's books. Mix thoroughly and bake for the length of time it takes you to go for a long walk in the woods. Take out of oven and allow to cool evenly before eating your own words."

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I just didn't know how to do it right, but I can't remember any of the amazing insights I had while practicing contemplation. None whatsoever. I do vividly remember the feeling of rightness that the practice engendered. The belief that I was testing the teachings in the laboratory of my own mind and finding that they held up wonderfully. Which is to say, when I applied the teachings to my life, I found that they always applied.

Eventually, I stopped picking up pennies from heaven. This happened just recently. I remember the feeling of transgression that dogged me when I first passed over a coin in the street. But you know what? It was laying in a puddle of puke in front of a bar down my street and I just couldn't stomach touching it. After that, not stooping to this particular superstition just got easier and easier.

A Dream Remembered

2007-11-19T18:54:00.000-05:00

Email to a friend, dated:

June 1999

Dear (Friend):

Thank you for the e-mail detailing the celebrations for Gurumayi's birthday. I've been meaning to write you since your last e-mail about moving to LA. I think it's wonderful that you are at last realizing your dream to move there and break into the film industry- the great communication vehicle of American culture and cradle of Maya. May you bring it light! I know you'll bring it love.

I didn't have time to make a wish for Gurumayi's birthday as your e-mail urged, because she found me first and gave me a beautiful gift of her own.

I went to bed late the night of the 23rd, just after midnight, and as I thought longingly of Gurumayi in those first few minutes of her birthday I wanted to offer her something. Often when I go to bed I think of those things I did wrong during the day and whisper a fragment of Baba's prayer to the Goddess:

"O Mother! As long as a person still has desires he is unworthy of receiving your grace, yet he makes an effort to acquire perfection. Knowing his many faults he lives in the world and remains weak."

But that night I thought instead of Baba's great command:

Honor yourself
Bow to yourself
Worship yourself
Your God dwells within as You

I decided to offer Gurumayi a gift of respect and love for my own Self. I had the uncharacteristic thought that I've actually been very constant in my spiritual search, that I always strive to understand myself better, to unfold my perfection more, and to see that perfection in others. Instead of judging my progress I allowed myself to admire my zeal for the path. Thinking thoughts like these, I fell asleep.

In the very early morning hours I had a dream that moved me so strongly that I awoke and was unable to go back to sleep until I had written it down. Nothing translates into language as poorly as dreams, which shift and fade even as we try to recall and capture them. Our experience of a dream occurs in the subtle body and soars free of the laws that govern physical existence. When we wake we might be still struck by the powerful, subtle impressions of a dream but they are quickly erased by the tangible sense impressions of our surrounding environment. This is why we forget dreams so quickly. Furthermore, when we try to remember a dream as it slips away we inevitably impose upon it the rules of logic that we believe order our waking world. In this way we alter its essential, evanescent character.

All of this is just to say that the story that follows is not my dream itself; but rather the message that dream left as it receded back into consciousness. Still, I don't value it any less. The scriptures say that the Self is that which stays awake while we dream, and reports back to us on our dreams when we awake--this, then, is the story my own Self whispered in my ear, in response to the love I showed it, in those early morning hours.

A young man or boy, a pilgrim, is at the end of a long journey to the burial shrine of a great saint. He is afflicted by a demon. The boy has heard that those who kiss the stone surface of the saint's tomb are so overcome with holy love that they stagger as they attempt to rise from their knees. Indeed, the shrine itself has ex votoes on its walls depicting stories of seekers who were struck lame by the holy kiss, remaining transfixed for the space of time it takes to recite one hundred Aves. The boy has therefore conceived of a plan--he will kiss the tomb and remain kneeling as he says his prayers, but the demon, reeling from the unaccustomed intoxication of divine love, will be captured there, and rising first, the boy will make his escape. The demon is not unaware of the boy's plan but he goes along because his pride does not allow him to believe that it will succeed, or because he wishes to test the power of the saint, or perhaps out of an unacknowledged longing.

In every dream the dreamer has to find a place to inhabit. If he himself is not a character in the dream he must either occupy one of the characters, or witness all of them from a distance, or shift between these perspectives. In the beginning of the dream I seemed to inhabit the boy, which is how I sensed the presence of the evil spirit. But in that moment when the boy's plan is about to come to fruition, as he kneels to kiss the stone latticework of the tomb's surface, I switch perspectives and find that I occupy the consciousness of the saint. I can feel (and this is where language loses its ability to capture experience and I have to satisfy myself with the meager crumbs of remembrance) the joyful, meditative lassitude of his inert body. I feel it pressing down on every point of that body as if a blanket of soft lead had been pressed over its features (as perhaps it had.)

I understand now how the saint's complete abandonment to the will of God has created its own gravity, attracting all things to itself—pilgrims, plants, flowers, birds, the stones of his shrine. I watch from beneath the latticework the face of the boy as he kneels and bends forward in reverence. I hear the beating of his heart. I feel the warmth of his breath as his mouth draws near... and I sense the chill waiting just behind it.

Esprit de Corps

2007-11-12T22:47:00.000-05:00

Let's imagine we've all been invited to a party. Some friends are getting together and each spontaneously phones others to come along and so on, until the party becomes something of an event. The host doesn't mind keeping an open door because the gathering is really a reunion: everyone attending, whether they know each other or not, shares a seminal experience in their past—perhaps they were the first burners when Burning Man was still held on the beach, or Deadheads who trouped after the band for an entire year, back before Jerry Garcia died and was reincarnated as an ice cream flavor. It doesn't matter. The thing is everyone shows up and someone starts to share their war stories. Others naturally join in. Even when the stories are sad they're tinged with a certain esprit de corps—a black humor when recounting a shared history that is both beloved and reviled, present and long gone. Everyone laughs at themselves when someone confesses her own gullibility. "Let's drink to our lost innocence!" A bottle of Rumi's wine is produced and poured out. That prompts someone to light up and pass that along too, and suddenly everyone is digging out their own high to share—like certain liberal Jesuits think Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes—by being the first to pass his lunch around he moved everyone else to do the same, until there was more than enough food to feed the crowd on the Mount of Olives.

The discussion becomes more impassioned even as it fragments into individual conversations. Someone brings up Zen, naturally. Someone else keeps floating metaphors and spinning them out until they get unwieldy. A couple in the corner are gossiping about whether or not one of the guests is secretly gay, or worse, a former swami. It's all still good. We're flush with the warmth of remembering things that we can't tell just anyone—if you weren't there you just wouldn't understand. And then an argument breaks out. Maybe there's a difference of opinion, or of the way things get remembered. The host intervenes as gently as he knows how; hey, hey there, no need for anger. We're all equally right and wrong. Let's all be One, OK? But this is misinterpreted too, and someone takes offense; overturning a table they start shouting: "Only a NAVY MAN can tell a Navy man when he's had too much to drink!" or something equally stupid. Quarrels break out and suddenly everyone is shouting at once, and whether they're appealing to order or fueling the fire it all just adds to the din.

What to do?

Here's what happened. The host turned up the lights and said "You don't have to go home folks, but you can't stay here." Party over.

The fact is, everything in civilized life is bound by societal norms—except an unmoderated blog. By giving voice to a minority who wanted to drag the discussion into the gutter, I created a free-for-all on this site. When I saw what I had created my only response was to shut it down.

But. The discussion we've had here does not deserve to be terminated because of some trolls. Rude guests who abuse the tolerance of others who are seeking open discourse on something that is tremendously meaningful to them, and puzzling, and unsettling and maddening and... so on.

So, Rituals of Disenchantment is open again. I will make the commitment to moderate comments. I think you'll find that I'm about as liberal as those good Jesuits who are eager to explain away Christ's miracles. Which is to say--you'll have to really be a flaming asshole not to get your comment posted. But if you are, you won't. Without explanation or response. Whoever is the viciously angry person(s) who flame the posts and comments here, I have a suggestion. Forget meditation and try upping your meds instead. You just might find the world a bearable place.

Not to Get all Drippy on You...

2007-11-05T23:05:00.000-05:00

But I'm really glad you're all along for the ride--here at "Rituals" and at all the other online gathering places where we can each speak our truth and find our way forward. Please don't discriminate; visit all these places, and often. Isn't it fucking wonderful to finally be able to say what we feel and--equally importantly--what we don't feel, with complete freedom?

(I know, I know, I'm Mr. Metaphor. But I have my rock-n-roll side too. MC --lovin the Zombies lyrics, 'cept now you got that damn song stuck in MY head!)

An Apparition from the Present

2007-11-04T10:43:00.000-05:00

The other day I was entering the lobby of my building at work when I was stopped short by a tall, elegant woman staring at me with a puzzled expression. All at once her face brightened in recognition, like one candle being lit from another. She rushed forward, graciously offering both her hand and her name, and in that instant I recognized her. "C" was a familiar face I'd encountered at the ashram for many years. I embraced her spontaneously; my body reacting to the joy of unexpectedly meeting another devotee out in the world a moment before my mind registered it. As we looked at one another our eyes radiated warmth, kindled by the flame of remembered fellowship. We made the usual inquiries after each other's welfare, and then she answered the question hanging over us both. "I'm still practicing; I just took the recent Intensive." "The one for Baba's mahasamadhi?" I asked, happy to know that little bit of what is still going on. She nodded and asked if I still practiced. I replied that I did in my own way; mentioning that I was blogging about my experiences. Her face flickered for an instant. I then tried on a role that an early commenter to "Rituals" bestowed on me and told her I was a jnani yogi now, practicing self-inquiry through writing—an answer that didn't really convince either of us.

And then, like every conversation with every devotee I've had in twenty years, the topic turned to Gurumayi. With a few words and gestures of resignation we shared our belief that she is not coming back. Or at least, the yoga that we had practiced so lovingly for so long would not return in its old form. Then "C" said something that astounded me; she confessed that this was not a surprise to her because of a letter she received from Gurumayi years ago. What could Gurumayi have communicated to a devotee in writing that would presage her own disappearance? She explained; it was a letter in which Gurumayi declined her request for an extended stay at the ashram, saying that "C's" light was needed out in the world. Suddenly, the bridge to the past we were standing on crumbled down the middle and an abyss opened up between us. Or, so I felt.

Undoubtedly I was projecting, but it seemed to me that "C" had accomplished a set of mental gymnastics that used to be as natural to me as yogic breathing, but that I no longer knew how to perform. She had taken a glaringly inconvenient fact about SY (the Guru had disappeared) and reconciled it in her mind by appending it to another experience that confirmed, explained or even mystically predicted it (Gurumayi told her that our light is needed not at the ashram, but out in the world.)

I didn't judge my friend: I envied her. Once I asked someone who has left SY what she misses most about the path. Her answer was devastating in its simplicity. "The certainty," she replied "I miss the certainty." Precisely. Siddha Yoga is a system of thought that, by brightly coloring every aspect of a devotee's life, eventually subsumes all others. Everything that happens can be explained through sustained contemplation of the teachings. Explained, not rationalized. Because much of what we came to understand and accept is anything but rational. I knew this even as I practiced contemplation to explain away contradictions between the teachings and their actual practice in SY. I practiced this "Self" mind control willingly and gladly—because I relished the feeling of certainty it bestowed, the freedom from questions that had no answer, the numinous aura of belief that lit up everyday reality in the physcial world, magically turning it from a bleak material plane of cause and effect into a playground of the Shakti.

The talks, the chanting and meditation, the ritual, the hypnotic repetition of the mantra in place of thought; all these built up, stone by stone by stone, a temple in our minds that was really a palace of mirrors. Every reflection corresponded to and explained another, even if it was warped by distortion. Gurumayi sat on her chair in the center of the palace, her image reproduced and reflected back a thousand times over. Because she held a candle, we believed that the hundreds of thousands of reflected flames we saw were ones she had lit in our hearts.

Maybe that's exactly what she wanted. I seem to remember a poem from her slim volume "Ashes at my Guru's Feet" in which Gurumayi used the metaphor of a shattered mirror to stand for the dissolution of her ego at the moment of enlightenment. Perhaps she wants us all to smash our mirrors. Or maybe, just maybe, finding herself once again in a hall of mirrors, she shattered them all herself. I hope so. I really do.

Nevertheless, it is left to each of us to pick up the pieces. "C" seems to have collected the shards of her experience and re-assembled them into a mosaic that paves a path she still faithfully walks. Every one of my Siddha Yoga brothers and sisters who have successfuly accomplished this, know that I hope to walk alongside you one day. Others, the ones who relished all those dancing saptahs, may have gathered their pieces of mirror and used them to create a disco ball. Excellent choice! Finding the unfettered joy and lighthearted laughter we shared together at the ashram in our mundane lives is miracle enough. Still others have swept theirs into a dustbin and walked out of the palace, never looking back. As for me, the pieces of my experience still litter the floor at my feet. For now, I like looking at them from the vantage point of my normal human height. I try to puzzle out how they could ever fit back together again, these shards of mirror that each reflect one fractured aspect of my features, like a Cubist collage.

This is Going Nowhere

2007-11-02T20:33:00.000-04:00

I've been following the metaphor of Krishna and the gopis seeking parallels with my practice of Siddha Yoga and the disappearance of Gurumayi, only to find the trail turn as cold as my sadhana. The gopis are abandoned, lost and alone; it appears Krishna really had been playing them all along. He got bored and grabbed his first chance to move to the big city and take eight queens as wives. The comments on the last post in which this betrayal was narrated intrigue me. No one seems to have much sympathy for the gopis, and the only advice we are able to muster is on the order of "get a life" or (and I love this one!) "he's just not that into you, ladies". Are we impatient with those 16,000 long-suffering cow-girls because they remind us too much of ourselves? Or is it because theirs is a cautionary fable. Avatars and Perfected Masters are fantastic at foreplay; the earth moves, the stars tremble and fall and all that. But they make lousy lovers, never sticking around long enough to engender the kind of trust that needn't be blind, or to help shoulder the burden of the daily grind. And if they're present to share our sorrows it is only because we will them to be; in the face of their absence it's the only comfort we've got.

In other words, the rasalila was one big dry hump.

The tale of Krishna and the gopis has been controversial for as long as it's been told. For centuries a debate raged among Hindu scholars regarding whether their love was svakiya (legitimate) or parakiya (illegitimate). The question was at last settled definitvely during a six-month long theological smack-down. I'll let Calasso relate how it ended:

"In the end, the disciples who upheld that the love between Krishna and the gopis was conjugal, legitimate, conceded defeat. They underwrote a document in which they accepted as correct the doctrine they had always abhored. But what were the decisive arguments that sealed the triumphant sovereignity of the illegitimate? Parakiya is that which brings the metaphysical element in love to the point of incandescence. And what is that element? Separation. Never is the rasa of separation so intense as in illegitimate passion. Furthermore, whatever is parakiya is denied the permanence of possession. It is a state in which one can only occasionally be possessed. This corresponds to the essence of every relationship with Krishna. Finally: the woman who abandons herself to a love that is parakiya risks more than other women. To violate the rules of conjugal order is to deny this world's bonds and abandon oneself to what calls to us from beyond our world. Such love does not seek to bear fruit and it never will. Whatever seeks to bear fruit will consume itself in that fruit. While that which disregards every fruit is inexhaustible."

It took the good scholars of India only half a year of intense debate to come to the truth any fan of the Lifetime channel or devotee of Italian opera knows in their heart: forbidden love is the hottest. Like the composers of grand opera, the rishis of ancient India lived in cultures steeped in tradition and tightly girded by the strictures of religion. Love was forbidden for one reason alone: it violated or threatened to sever the bonds that culture held most sacred—whether of marriage, religion or clan.

We don't live in such a world (thank goddess). So, what is forbidden to us, who have inherited every freedom? To love someone who doesn't love us back. Unrequited love's a bore, so the song says, but only if you're stuck listening to your friend go on about 'the one that got away'. If you're the one who is mired in it, infatuation is endlessly fascinating. You get to play victim of the capriciousness of fate, martyr to the ideal of a love so true it thrives even when rejected. What never occurs to us is that this kind of love survives only because it isn't returned. Infatuation, like parakiya, depends on the element of separation. A lover who withholds their attention or, worse, allows you only an occasional taste of themselves like Krishna petting his gopis, remains forever idealized. You're free to project onto the tabula rasa of their indifference all the best qualities you long for in a lover. Such a love is dangerously seductive precisely because it is all ache and no release. Reality can never intrude on an idyll when it is conducted solely in fevered fantasy, bereft of the sort of cold shower delivered when your boyfriend forgets your anniversary, or goes out for beers with the boys leaving you to clean up their Super Bowl mess.

The relationship between devotee and guru in Siddha Yoga is petrified in just such idealized amber. In "The Perfect Relationship" (note the starkly naked message of the title) Baba Muktananda wrote about the difference between romantic love between two people, and the love that exists between disciple and guru. He says (from memory, my SY books are in storage and I see no need to cite chapter and verse) that mundane love is a business transaction, on the order of "you give me this and I'll give you that; stop doing this and I won't do that". The guru-disciple relationship has no such crass bargaining; it is all surrender to unconditional love. Baba meant to press home the superior purity of spiritual love, but he opens up a Pandora's box. His definition hews uncomfortably close to our experience of mundane infatuation and obsession. Wonderfully remote, physically present only in the stolen clasp of darshan, or as a blaze of orange just glimpsed before we lowered our eyes behind hands clasped in reverence, the guru played Krishna and we worshipful gopis played ecstatically along.

And now, like the gopis we are wandering in silence. Ok, maybe not silence, our ongoing online discussions prove that. One commenter asked what advice we should give the gopis of Vrndavana. Here's mine. You will love and you will be torn from that love. The duty of forsaken love is to extinguish itself without leaving behind the ash of bitterness. Because only you will taste of that bitterness.

-----------------------------------------------

"Parakiya is that which brings the metaphysical element in love to the point of incandescence"

"Jyota se jyota jagavo
Sadguru jyota se jyota jagavo."

Interlude End

2007-10-31T19:19:00.000-04:00

"Krishna left the forest and meadows of Vrndavana for the city of Dvaraka, where he was united in wedlock to eight queens. The gopis now roamed in silence. Accustomed to the emotion of stolen love, when they were alone they would sometimes say the words "you thief" over and over, but without getting any response. Life went on as though Krishna had never been with them. Separation, emptiness, absence: this was the new emotion, and the only one."

Calasso, "Ka"

What Color is Your Krishna?

2007-10-25T19:34:00.000-04:00

We are visiting the labyrinth of the night forest of Vrndavana. Krishna has just disappeared and the gopis are fleeing through the sacred groves in every direction. When the rasalila abruptly ended they awoke with a start, as if from enchantment; immediately each was seized by the twin coils of shame and desire. Shame, because they knew they'd left their homes and families to cavort with a lover; Desire, because they were desperate to consummate a forbidden act of love that had ended almost before it began. The gopis threw themselves headlong down the forest's thousand and one paths searching for Krishna in every direction except the one in which he could be found—up.

There is only one perspective from which it is possible to view a labyrinth in its entirety, and that is from above. Krishna had simply climbed a moonbeam until he could look down on his many lovers at once. What he saw startled him. The briars and brambles of the forest were shot through with a hundred shades of red. Each belonged to a scrap of cloth torn from the sari of a gopi as she darted first this way, then that. These flashes of bright crimson radiated outward from the clearing where the rasalila took place, like embers bursting from a burning log, like hyper-oxygenated blood cells escaping from the heart into the arteries, veins and capillaries of a panicked captive.

What did Krishna feel when he was confronted with this sight? Pity? Regret? Love?

Exactly what does a god feel for his devotees? This is not a rhetorical question; I really want to know. Krishna's dalliance with the gopis is traditionally explained as a game, a sport, a play of consciousness in which the divine lover entices the human heart to leave behind its mundane concerns and become enraptured with the eternal. But, if the gopis could never hope to follow Krishna when he would retreat to his eternal nature as Vishnu, to what end did he entice them? It is the quality of sport that unnerves here; Krishna may have been only playing, but no one likes to have their heart toyed with, least of all by god.

Which begs a further question—what was the gopis' experience? When they danced with their own personal Krishna did they feel they were standing at the threshold of the divine? Or, were they seduced by a perfect lover who, against all odds, had chosen them—a poor, wide-hipped farm girl to be his one true love?

It's said that the gopis each danced with a Krishna who conformed to her exact desires. That's why, when some brushed their breasts against his chest it was a deep indigo, others danced with a lover whose skin was the color of hyacinth, others sighed after a Krishna whose pale flesh was stained blue only along its veins. The differing colors of Krishna's skin may be seen as a visual metaphor for the varying guises the divine lover adopts for each gopi. For many, of course, Krishna was the dashing prince depicted in miniature paintings of the rasalila—handsome, flirtatious, attentive—the exact opposite of the brutish husbands who awaited them at home and demanded to be treated as a household god. Others, perhaps, were more enchanted by the adolescent Krishna, the trickster who hid behind the sandalwood trees with his posse of teenage boys, impatiently waiting to jump out and scare the younger gopis so that, trembling with excitement, they spilt their milk pails. Still others might well have lusted after the mature Krishna, brave warrior and steadfast charioteer for Arjuna on the battle-field of Kurukshetra, father-figure extraordinaire.

I can equally imagine a gopi who had lost her only child when he was just a toddler, leaving her marriage bed to wander in the forest following after the giggles and squeals of a small child. Reaching the clearing where the rasalila is to take place, she bends and sweeps the baby Krishna into her arms, that little thief whose mouth and chest are slick with stolen butter from the jar he grasps in tiny, chubby hands. After dancing with him she returns to her bed, her breasts now smeared with butter too, and when her husband sleepily reaches out for them she smacks his hand and rolls away, unwilling to let him nuzzle nipples still tender from suckling a god.

What do all these Krishnas have in common? Each is uniquely capable of satisfying the deepest longings of the gopi he dances with. He alone is able to fill the void she feels in her soul. Only in this guise will she permit him to lure her away from family, friends, the duties of hearth and home. Only dancing with this form does she allow herself to become totally vulnerable, opening up so completely that Krishna, the thief who could steal anything, finds no need to abscond with her heart, she has already placed it in his cupped hands.

We are all of us gopis. Thinking of Krishna's endlessly mutable nature reminds me of the verse we chanted together in the Guru Gita countless times:

"Salutations to Shri Guru. In order to receive the true understanding of the world, I consider you to be my father, my mother, my brother and my God."

Here we might add: sister, lover, grandfather, best friend, only friend, co-conspirator, disciplinarian, high-priestess, advocate, counselor, story-teller, sorceress...

The four roles mentioned in the above verse are not meant to delimit the Guru, rather they stand for any role, every role that the devotee needs the Guru to play. Between Bade Baba, Baba Muktananda and Gurumayi, these were practically endless for the followers of Siddha Yoga. My principle relationship to the Guru was with Gurumayi, and after receiving shaktipat I clung to her for many years like a child clings to the skirts of his mother. After much sadhana, I began to see her in a different way—as a sister. I felt that she was calling me to rise and stand shoulder to shoulder with her like Balarama stood with Krishna, or Lakshmana stood with Rama. This evolution was emblematic of a deep healing of my psyche. I had lost my mother when I was two years old. Too young to remember her at all. Growing up, when other children talked about their mothers, I was silent. For me, my mother was present only as an absence—negative space inhabiting the margins of the pages of my life's story. My relationship with Gurumayi somehow filled up that space, allowed me to engage with a maternal presence and so to grow, and to grow up. And then, just when I felt that we had attained a species of equality that would enable us to work together as one—she was gone.

The abandonment I had experienced with the death of my mother—sudden, unexplained and unfathomable loss—was repeated. It remains to be seen if the recurrence of this absence will prove to be another opportunity for radical re-integration and healing—or simply a further devastation.

Interlude Prolonged

2007-10-24T19:21:00.000-04:00

"When the first full moon of autumn approaches and the jasmine is in bloom, the shrill soft sound of the flute penetrates the rooms. It is Krishna calling. Whatever they are doing, the gopis are roused. One gets up from the half-empty pail where she was milking a cow. One gets up from the flickering twigs where she was lighting the fire. One gets up from the bed where her husband was about to embrace her. One gets up from the toys she was playing with on the floor. One knocks over the bottle she was using to perfume herself. They are little girls, adolescents, wives who suddenly and furtively set off toward the forest. All you would hear was a twinkling of bangles and ankle bracelets through the dark. Slipping out from the trees, each believing she was alone, they found Krishna in a moonlit clearing. He looked at them as they stood still, panting from haste, smiled and said 'Women of good fortune, what can I do for you? The night is full of frightening creatures. Sons, husbands and parents are waiting for you in the village. I know you have come here for me. This is happiness. But you mustn't let people stay up worrying on your account. Celebrate my name in silence, from afar.' Then one of the gopis spoke up on behalf of all the others: 'Nothing we have left behind is as urgent and important to us as adoring the soles of your feet. No one is closer to us than you are. Why is it that learned men can find refuge in you, and we cannot? We grovel in the dust of your footsteps. Place your hand on our breasts and our heads.' Krishna smiled again and began to walk, playing Murali, the flute. From behind a curtain of leaves came the sound of the Yamuna flowing by. One by one, in order, the gopis came up to Krishna and, shaking breasts damp with sweat and sandalwood oil, brushed against his blue chest. Whenever Krishna laid his mouth on a new hole of his musical rod, his lips wet a different part of the gopis' bodies. In the milky light you could just see the pink marks his nails left. Dancing ever so slowly, the gopis closed around Krishna as he went on playing Murali. Each felt seized, abandoned and seized again, as if by a wave. Then all at once each noticed that her eyes met those of the gopis on the other side of the circle, while the center was suddenly empty. Yet again, Krishna had disappeared."

Calasso, "Ka"

An Interlude

2007-10-23T17:17:00.000-04:00

"The rasalila, 'the dance game,' the circular dance that is echoed in every other dance, couldn't get started. Each of the gopis wanted to be nearest to Krishna. They were all trying to get close enough to color his skin with the saffron paste smeared on their breasts. That way they would have managed, even if for only a few seconds, to have left a trace of themselves on him. A cluster of shawls, bodices, and slender, glistening chests closed him in on every side. Then in order to get the dance going, Krishna decided to multiply himself. He resorted to his knowledge of mirrors and reflection. In the circle, between each gopi and the next, another Krishna appeared, holding them by the hand and looking alternately at one, then the other, as though following the steps of the dance, though each gopi was convinced that he was there for her alone. The yellow cloth wrapped around his loins was always the same, but the color of his skin varied, from dark blue to hyacinth. These were the many Krishnas, while the one Krishna remained in the center of the circle, where the gopis could see nothing at all."

from Robert Calasso's "Ka—Stories of the Mind and Gods of India"

Metaphorically Speaking

2007-10-20T16:13:00.000-04:00

As a writer I love metaphor (OK maybe a bit too much). I love how by simply holding something up and calling it by another name you can suddenly perceive it from a fresh angle that would otherwise remain obscured by habit. While writing this blog I've seized on a number of metaphors to more fully understand the current state of my relationship with Gurumayi and Siddha Yoga. The first was the name "Rituals of Disenchantment" which came to me after quite a bit of soul-searching, and then wouldn't leave me. It seemed to sum up the impasse I found myself in after 20 years of sadhana in which the Guru-Disciple relationship was forever paramount, only to discover that the Guru seemed to have up and left the relationship on her own and without so much as a farewell or forwarding address. It's not easy being jilted by a divine lover, and my abandonment issues were understandably inflamed. I suddenly felt that over the years I had become spellbound through the hypnotic intensity of Siddha Yoga practices—literally enchanted with the worship of a being I believed to be a living saint—and only through an equally incantatory and ritualized writing practice might I free myself from the fatal glamour of that spell.

And then I thought again. Maybe Gurumayi had planned this as a teaching? Maybe this was her way of disengaging us from an outward relationship that was finite and mutable, so that we might plunge more desperately and so more deeply into an inner relationship that was infinite and eternal. If so, she intended a break from the past that was at least as radical as the one I had imagined. If so, Gurumayi also wanted us to become disenchanted with the limits of our communal experience in order to break through to a future that would hold a new and more lasting magic for us all.

Either way, "Rituals of Disenchantment" seemed to work, both as metaphor and practice.

And so I began to write, but no sooner had I begun than I felt the metaphoric landscape shift and slide away beneath me; there were so many questions about the past twenty years of my sadhana that had remain unasked and unexamined for too long. Where to begin? I didn't know in which direction to turn. No sooner would I plunge forward to consider one (once off-limits) aspect of my experience then another would arise to turn me aside and lure me down its blind alleyway. That's when I posted that I felt I had stumbled into a labyrinth. And this new metaphor is one that apparently resonates with many others, as "MC" wrote in one of her comments:

"This theme of experiencing God in his absence is one that is very present for me now that Christopher has framed the labyrinth as a metaphor...It's rich and I look forward to lots of companionship there. Pan's Labyrinth I watched on the edge of my seat, not understanding a tenth of what was going on. Just like when I was kid, watching films I couldn't fathom, but fascinated."

Like MC, I was fascinated by Guillermo Del Toro's darkly majestic film (which as a fairy tale succeeds best if it is viewed with the wondrously wide eyes of a child). This enchanted movie reminds us that, traditionally, labyrinths both encompass and enclose the magical and forbidden. For the girl in Del Toro's film the labyrinth was both a refuge from an arbitrary and brutally violent world, and a testing ground in which she was trusted with a series of tasks—the completion of which would prove whether she was worthy to rule that enchanted underground realm. In myth, however, the labyrinth is not often conceived of as a refuge. And as a testing ground, it is not a territory to be explored, but rather escaped. Monsters and minotaurs prowl the heart of the labyrinth; heroes either slay them and emerge unscathed or remain forever trapped within, their bones whitening to become indistinguishable from the blank walls of chalk that imprison them.

I have a dream of the Siddha Yoga sangham; we are all cleaving together as one at an immense dancing saptah. Imagine the dancing circles behind the South Fallsburgh mandap—times ten thousand. Women, men and children all dance at the same time and there is so much room if we close our eyes it's as if each of us is dancing alone. We do the sidelong sliding step in unison, clap our hand and chant in unison—the women calling and the men responding. Everyone's eyes are turned to the center of the circles where Gurumayi dances by herself in an empty fire pit—orange robes twisting and flapping in the breeze like tongues of flame lapping the cool night air. As we dance and chant and sway the small rose bushes planted between the circles begin to grow and flourish, climbing and thickening until they stretch overhead and we can't see anything except the path in front and behind us. We are each of us lost in our own private ecstasy. Suddenly, a dark cloud obscures the face of the moon and everything is plunged into absolute darkness. As the drumbeats and harmonium fade into silence a few dancers—madwomen or saints—wrap their pale arms around themselves and twirl to music they alone continue to hear. The rest of us begin searching for a way out; stretching our arms outward to take the measure of the space around us and find our direction. But, instead of fingering rose blossoms our hands and arms are scratched and torn by thorns.

We have become like the gopis abandoned by a thousand Krishnas and lost in the labyrinth of the night forest.

to be continued

In Which Camp Are Your Pitching Your Tent?

2007-10-19T14:42:00.001-04:00

Shortly after I posted last Sunday my home computer began what seems like a sharp descent into hard drive failure (We'll leave speculation as to whether that is a manifestation of coincidence, synchronicity or the Guru's will for another time). I’ve had to leave it shut down until a friend can do some diagnostics and, hopefully, repair it. Hence, I've been posting sporadically from work, and just today was pleased to discover that people have been reading here and posting comments and observations. Thank you all! The more this monologue becomes a dialogue, the more fulfilling it will be for me—and surely the more interesting for all of you.

One of the commentators who posted a response to my last entry took issue with the hypothetical scenario I imagined in which Gurumayi returned to the chair but admitted mistakes, made restitution and asked to be seen as nothing more mysterious or holy than a teacher. Anonymous wrote:

"Hypothetically, it would be absolutely wonderful. However in the two years plus since I completely quit Siddha Yoga, I've somehow managed to totally forget how to speak Hypothetical. The language has escaped me. And thus, I prefer not to hold my breath waiting for the actualization of the hypothesis you pose."

I'm not holding my breath either, Anonymous. If I had been, I suppose I'd be long dead. More and more what fascinates me is not the mystery of Gurumayi's disappearance, or whether she will return, but rather the question—what exactly were we doing during all those years we practiced together? I conjured up a hypothetical future for Gurumayi as an ordinary teacher in order to speculate about her past as an "enlightened, perfected master," what it meant to us, what hold it exerted over us, how much it contributed to the sense of worth we attributed to our practices and to the path itself.

It seems to me that the Siddha Yoga sangham is increasingly separating into two camps—those who are waiting for it all to come springing back, and those who have moved on—with or without a sense of closure. I began this blog feeling that I was out there wandering somewhere in the middle, in no-man's land. It has come as a real surprise that the more I think about SY, and the more I write about it, the less I can imagine it returning as a path, and the less I seem to need or want it to. Maybe writing this blog is my search for closure. And maybe there are others like me who want to consider more deeply what value, if any, those years had for us, if only to aid in the search for whatever of meaning will come next for us.

Wherever you've pitched your tent, I love having you along on the journey!

SeekHer

P.S. I especially want to thank Marta Szabo for inviting the readers of THE GURU LOOKED GOOD to visit here. Marta, your emotionally honest narrative about your time in Siddha Yoga is something truly special. For so long, I fantasized that the day would come when I could write freely, openly and honestly about my experiences of the path. The thought that it would be a kind of betrayal of the path always stopped me. Your example in doing so was—and is—courageous. May many more people follow it in the search for their own truth.

Into the Labyrinth

2007-10-17T08:33:00.000-04:00

"Diodorus Siculus tells the story of a god who had been cut into pieces and scattered; which of us, strolling at dusk or recollecting a day from the past, has never felt that something of infinite importance has been lost?"
Jorge Luis Borges, Paradiso XXXI, 108

Maybe because my last post left me at the mouth of a labyrinth, I've been thinking about Borges, famous lover of labyrinths who used them as a central symbol in much of his writing. So, I picked up a volume of his work and turned to the above verse, the opening lines of a poem about the search for a lost god whose presence is felt by his worshippers only as an absence.

(Gurumayi, anyone?)

I can't read Borges without thinking it would have been easy to love him, to fall in love with the man whose extraordinary imagination could gestate entire worlds, or summon up a single, ancient evening in just a few lines. But a man is not synonymous with his art. Maybe Jorge Luis was surly in the morning if his eggs were runny, or maybe his underarms smelled like onions, or he scattered his clothes on the floor while making his drunken way to bed, expecting that his wife would dutifully pick them up before joining him for some hot monkey-love. Borges was doubtless guilty of a thousand and one faults which, over time, could turn love cold. Which is to say, he was merely human—even if he could write like a god.

But is this the way true love works? Don't lovers tolerate and even come to embrace each other's imperfections? That's been my experience. I've learned to face, and found the courage to change, some of my more egregious character flaws only after watching a boyfriend lovingly accept them, time and again. And I've performed the same healing function for him. In fact, wouldn't it seem inhuman, even monstrous, to insist that someone be perfect before you loved and accepted them?

If so, how did we all come to fall in love with the idea of a perfected master?

What did it mean when we said that the Guru was perfect? That she always acted in unity with the Shakti? That she saw perfection in everything, even us imperfect humans? Or, did it mean that she never made a mistake?

For many of us who only saw Gurumayi in public, always immaculately dressed, exquisitely poised, reading talks that were painstakingly scripted and polished with practiced spontaneity, it was easy to develop strange notions about what the Guru's perfection meant. I remember a day in the early 90's, at the apex of the Guru-as-Goddess stage in Siddha Yoga, sitting in Amrit with otherwise intelligent people debating whether or not Gurumayi actually menstruated (the thinking being she was a lifelong celibate by definition, so why would she need to?) How many of us true believers were all too eager to ascribe to her magical powers—if someone got up and shared in an Intensive that Gurumayi had appeared in their room and talked them through some difficulty, even though she was physically thousands of miles away at the time, well, the Guru could bilocate! And who among us hasn't sat in a chant, nursing some private sorrow, and believed that Gurumayi picked our face out of the thousands sitting before her in the mandap to deliver a penetrating gaze, or a momentary comforting smile, as a sign that she had read our thoughts and was answering our silent prayer?

Of course, the culture and practices of Siddha Yoga fed the flames of this sort of fevered apotheosis.The thousands of pictures of the Guru that papered the walls of the ashram, the steady stream of experience shares (themselves carefully crafted and "coached") that related miracles due to Gurumayi's or Baba's grace, the daily worship of Bade Baba's murti and the attendant hush of sacred stillness that permeated the atmosphere of the temple. If the teachings of Siddha Yoga were careful to make a distinction between the inner and outer Guru, placing the former above the latter in importance to the individual seeker, what was this orgy of outer worship about? Why did we need it?

I can imagine a Siddha Yoga grounded in the same Kashmir Shaivite teachings, with precisely the same list of spiritual practices, in which the physical Guru is merely "first among many" as a fellow practitioner. Revered as a teacher, but not worshipped. Not infallible, equally capable of making errors and learning from them. But would we want this?

Hypothetically, what if Gurumayi were to return to us chastened, admit to her wrongs and the wrongs of others committed under her watch, make restitution to individuals she has hurt, ask forgiveness from them privately and the sangham publically. What if she also asked to be seen as nothing more mysterious or holy than a teacher—would we take her back? Or are we willing to accept nothing less than perfection in our Guru?

OK. This is weird.

2007-10-14T18:27:00.000-04:00

The moment I posted my first entry to this blog—that is, the very second my mouse clicked the "Publish Post" button, my cell rang with a call from "N," someone who is close to Gurumayi's inner circle and whom I've known and trusted for many years. "N" had called to tell me she's in town from LA and wanted to get together. We made plans to see each other for coffee in a few days and I hung up with a lingering, unsettling feeling that the Guru knew and saw what I was posting here, and had reached out to tell me so.

Let's look at that. The way I see it, there are several possible explanations for this incident:

THE RATIONALIST PERSPECTIVE
It was a mere coincidence, easily explained by the fact that I had called "N" recently after months of not being in touch, because Siddha Yoga had begun to occupy my thoughts more and more and her perspective was, and is, one I respect. The coincidence might have been dramatic in its timing, but that only has significance if I choose to invest it with special meaning. Otherwise, it was just two random events occuring at the same time, not unlike dozens of others twin occurences that go unnoticed every day precisely because they hold no meaning for me.

THE CONCEPT OF SYNCHRONICITY
"Synchronous events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework which encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems which display the synchronicity."

I'm quoting from a Wikipedia entry on Jung, which should be all the evidence you need that I have neither studied nor truly comprehend Jung's theory. But, it seems to me to go something like this: we are all connected by a vast collective unconscious that at times makes our shared connections plain through coincidental events that have no causal relationship. Synchronicity, then, is an invitation to look at coincidence and invest it with meaning. To pull the threads of our experience apart and examine them, following each back to see where it leads. You don't have to believe in god with a capital G to believe in synchronicity, faith in a common ground of being is sufficient.

"COINCIDENCE IS GOD'S WAY OF REMAINING ANONYMOUS"
This maxim, popular in Siddha Yoga, finds its expression in all religions. Coincidence is not merely an invitation to slow down and look for hidden connections; it is a revelation from God (Her)Self that is pregnant with meaning for the believer. It might be a sign that what you are doing is good, and you have blessings to proceed. It might be a warning that you should go back, you've crossed a boundary and are trespassing on something holy. In either case, the believer isn't the origin of the meaning invested in the coincidence; it comes directly from God.

It's tempting to look at these alternate theories as a set of Russian nesting dolls. The rationalist perspective is the outer shell; big, bright and colorful but when opened—empty of any further content. Synchronicity hides just beneath the surface; it rewards the curious who are willing to twist apart their reality in the search for a deeper significance. And God is the innermost shell; meaning in seed form, the still, quiet voice that reveals our destiny.

That's the way I used to see things. But, I'm not playing with dolls these days. Rather, it seems to me that I've stepped into a labyrinth in which any of the above perspectives can be followed, and any one of them might lead to a blind alley, become a circuit that deposits me back to exactly where I started, or be the arc that leads to the very heart of the truth.

Where in Hell is Gurumayi?

2007-10-14T13:35:00.000-04:00

It's an open question. As in now open for discussion.

Gurumayi hasn't been seen in public for—how long has it been? Three years, almost four? It's hard to know precisely because news of her appearances has long been carefully controlled and sometimes concealed by those closest to her. I do know the last time I saw her; it was January 1, 2004 when I did seva helping to broadcast the last New Year's message that she gave in person: "Experience the Power Within. Kundalini Shakti." Soon afterwards she began to slowly fade away; first closing her ashram in upstate New York to outside visitors, then abruptly stopping public initiations. The following year she failed to appear to give the New Year's address, and instead issued a cryptic command that Siddha yogis should repeat the study of the previous year's message.

Or did she?

Communications from South Fallsburg (the international headquarters of Siddha Yoga) have been exquisitely calibrated to neither disclose her whereabouts nor quote her directly. Gurumayi's followers have been left to trust what they're (not) being told and invited not to ask questions.

Well, I can no longer trust without questioning. So, let's began with this: Why should anyone care about Gurumayi's disappearance? True believers are taught not to associate the eternal Guru Principle too closely with any transient human form, however beloved, while skeptics (of whom Siddha Yoga has many) doubtless cheer the seeming abdication of a teacher who has been implicated in numerous scandals in recent years, and who some now believe to be a false guru.

My answer is that it matters to me. This blog is an ongoing search not merely for information on Gurumayi's whereabouts, but for signs that the yoga I've practiced under her guidance for the past twenty years is a true path. In this quest I won't so much be looking for outside evidence as I will be trying—at last—to examine my own experiences of Siddha Yoga, their value and merit, without the constriction of a devotional narrative framework. Readers who are familiar with the Siddha Yoga "experience talk" straight-jacket will understand what I'm talking about here. Make no mistake. I treasure many of the spiritual experiences I've had while practicing Siddha Yoga; the intimately fulfilling states of self-awareness in meditation, the ecstatic, transcendental highs of group chanting, the silent swing of my inner compass pointing true north during profound self-inquiry. What I no longer value is the stultifying Siddha Yoga culture that replaces true self-inquiry (which must remain open to the divine contradictions and bittersweet ambiguities of real life) with foregone-conclusion contemplation that ties everything up in a neat package and wraps it in a brightly-colored Lesson Learned Due To The Guru's Grace.

I believe it is the responsibility of all of us who have practiced Siddha Yoga to break the seal that a false devotion once clamped over the doors of our free expression. It's the only way forward. I'll be the first to say that it's scary. Very scary. Because we don't know what we'll find. People I know and trust have taken this way and come to unbelief. Just deciding to start down this path feels like a departure from the path of Siddha Yoga to me. But I can't go back.

I've named this blog Rituals of Disenchantment because we all have to break the spell of silence that has been cast over the Siddha Yoga sangham if we are ever to become re-enchanted with this yoga again. In this, everyone is welcome to participate in their own way. I'm keeping this blog open to anyone who wants to read it, and to post to it. I want this to be a place where you can speak your own truth, whether you have left the path, are still on squarely on it, or don't know where you stand. Just be honest and kind. If we can't be kind with one another, what really have we attained after all this time?