Lucid Memories, Chapter One, 2

My BART train stops at 19th Street in Oakland, a block away from The Paramount Theater. As I come up out of the station, I’m stunned to see a long line of hundreds, maybe thousands, snaking out the clogged lobby doors. My eyes follow the line, all the way down to the corner and around the block. The crowd must be quadruple the size of the one that attended the Oakland Ashram programs in 1989. Clearly the word had spread.

Heading down the street and tacking myself on to the end of the line I feel suddenly empty-handed. Almost everyone else is holding something. Many carry tote bags packed with small cushions, shawls and bottled water. Others clutch bouquets of flowers or cup whole coconuts in their hands. A few even appear to be prepared with all of the above.

Once inside the opulent, Art Deco Paramount, I snag one of the last empty seats along a back row and sit. I’m early, but apparently lucky to have this spot. Glancing toward the stage I notice several rows up front are still vacant, blocked off by white computer printed signs with bold black letters that say RESERVED. I exchange a small, polite smiles with the older women seated on either side of me, then sink back into my plush green velvet chair and take the eye-popping Paramount in.

An hour later the program begins. I fidget through a long series of announcements: Where to register for the upcoming weekend Intensive; information on the new chanting tape that just became available in the bookstore; directions to the temporary Amrit Café that’s been set up across the street and will open for dinner after the program; and, finally, a flight-attendant style walk through of post-program logistics that informs us how and when the hall monitors will assist each individual row in exiting the theater prior to darshan.  After Gurumayi’s talk we all need to leave our hard-won spots and then line up again outside before coming back in to see her.

This tedious list of “business items” is followed by several testimonials from well-dressed devotees whose lives have been transformed in subtle and dramatic ways since they stepped onto the Siddha path. One woman in a tailored blue dress suit shares that while deliberating over an important career move, Gurumayi appeared to her in a dream and said, “Do what you love.” Upon hearing her testimony, several pockets of the congregation let out long, audible sighs. Next, a bit of an aw-shucks but still earnest college-age guy steps up to the mike and starts by sharing that he lives near the Ashram in Oakland. He then recounts how chanting the mantra saved him from getting mugged at his local Laundromat. He’s sincere, but his reverent mention of the guru in the context of a story about a near-crime comes over a bit awkward. He receives a somewhat non-response from the hall, then sits back down.

Where is Gurumayi?

My mind wanders. My eyes wander too – along the sensuous carvings of the heavens that ascend the Paramount’s gilded walls, all the way up to the ceiling, to the Art Deco angel hovering over the proceedings, his enormous ornate wings outstretched above us all. When I return my attention to center stage, to Gurumayi’s elegant, empty chair, I realize: four years later and here I am, moments away from seeing her again. I have no idea what to expect.

The MC for the night steps up to the microphone and makes a final announcement in a low, devotional hush, “Gurumayi will be joining us soon . . . ” then sits down. Although I came here alone, I now feel my anticipation pulsing in the air, in synch with everyone else’s.

The lights illuminating The Paramount’s stenciled, cookie-cutter style ceiling, three balconies up, dim from a brilliant magenta to a soft blue. A musician near Gurumayi’s empty chair strums his tamboura and the vibrations echo through the crystalline acoustics of the hall. Another musician joins in on her harmonium, and a small group of lead chanters begins softly, “Oh-oh-om, Nah-mah, Shi-va-ah-ah-ah-ah-ayah . . .”

Little by little, each one of us lends our voice to this tender call and response, as if joining in on a cherished refrain. Within a few rounds, I feel the focus of our collective attention slowly submerge into the sweeping majesty of the mantra.

“Oh-oh-om, Nah-mah, Shi-va-ah-ah-ah-ah-ayah . . .”

I’ve been listening to this particular version of the mantra on an old cassette player in my bedroom for years. Tonight, brought to life by thousands of harmonious voices and amplified up into the rafters of this grand old theater, it has to be the most glorious music I’ve ever heard.

Time suspends. Nothing exists prior to or outside of this moment. Here we are.

I close my eyes for a moment and drift.

When I open them again I do it just in time to see her, gliding in through the wings beneath the dim blue lights. The moment feels private, intimate, like it’s just us.

Everything about Gurumayi is graceful and delicate. Gliding across the stage, her billowing silk robes appear to be as thin and soft as rose petals. She seems almost weightless. As she approaches her chair and turns towards the hall, her hand floats up in a silent, slow motion wave. Almost on cue, as if my heart has been punctured by her gesture, I burst into tears. And, just as instantaneously as when I first saw her four years ago, my tears soon become sobs. It’s as if all the self-doubt and loathing, all the anxiety and depression, all the emotional rot I’ve been stuffing away inside since I saw her last is being pumped right out of me. Feelings I didn’t consciously know I’d buried – regrets, mistakes, all the times I’d bullied myself over another failure – are being pumped in a fury to the surface and bailed away.

Gurumayi pauses before ascending the carpeted steps that lead up to her chair and bows before the giant floodlit photograph of her teacher, Baba Muktananda, suspended from the ceiling. She takes her elegant poised position on her armless, low-backed chair and folds her hands delicately in her lap. Once she is situated, a young, thin, dark-haired man in a black suit and dress socks inches in on his knees to adjust the long arm of her microphone, carefully positioning it near her mouth. As he does all his eyes remain fixed on Gurumayi, who looks past him as if he’s not there and continues her unbroken gaze toward the hall.

As the young man retreats backwards and away from her chair, Gurumayi joins us in the chant.

Her voice adds the quality of longing to our chorus and pierces some untouched place deep inside me. She chants with us briefly, maybe ten minutes, but those ten minutes feel expansive and rich. By the time the chant subsides, my sobbing has calmed.

We all sit together in silence.

After what feels like exactly a beat, the young man in the suit and dress socks inches again back up toward Gurumayi’s chair, this time to place before her a Plexiglas lectern containing her talk. Gurumayi then sings the opening invocation – a dedication to her Guru, I think. It’s a sing-songy Sanskrit tongue-twister of sorts I usually fast-forward through whenever I listen to my mom’s cassette recordings of Gurumayi’s talks. Most of those seated around me know the words and join in. I don’t know the words, or even what the song means. I just want to get to the talk. I sink back again into my green velvet seat and listen, and wait.

The invocation concludes, the final tamboura vibrations dissolve, and for a moment the entire hall feels held in a state of heightened, alert silence.

Making a slow sweeping survey of the crowd, Gurumayi seems to take each one of us in before opening her talk with her familiar and warm, “With great respect and love, I welcome you all, with all my heart.”

Her resonant voice fills the hall; no sound outside it is heard.

“It’s so perfect,” she begins, blasting us with the evening’s first blast of her mile-wide smile, “That we embark on this month of programs here, at The Paramount. Because, as you know, as Baba always said in all of his talks: The practice of Meditation is paramount!”

She laughs, we laugh, and here we are – reunited with the one who holds a place in our hearts so dear it feels like it’s exclusively hers.

I’m so glad I’m here. I'm so glad I came. It feels so good to be with her like this again. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Continuing on, her voice turns tender as she adds, “One of The Paramount’s staff members shared with us that this theater was built during The Depression. In fact, we learned that this theater was actually created as a retreat from the sadness that existed just outside its front doors. And so, as we begin this month together, what a wonderful reminder The Paramount Theater will provide us that what is inside is far more magnificent than anything we could ever find out in the world.”

I feel the whole hall smile.

Immediately after Gurumayi’s talk, I’m outside the front doors of the theater again, shifting my weight back and forth as my legs fall asleep in a darshan line that won’t budge. Four years ago, during the Oakland Ashram programs, my mom and I lined up for darshan inside the meditation hall, fifty feet from Gurumayi's chair. Back then we were whisked through the ceremony in twenty minutes. Tonight, even though I rush to claim a place in line inside the lobby, it’s all for naught. Within seconds I’m promptly herded along with the masses by a small army of efficient women plying clipboards and wearing nametags covered in color-coded stickers, back out onto the street.

I can’t believe how many people are here. But I also can’t imagine why the line isn’t moving. Maybe after going four years without seeing Gurumayi everyone has a lot to say. I stand in the same spot for two hours.

Lucid Memories, Chapter One: Lucky

Way back in May or so of last year I offered to open RoD up to anyone who wanted to post a memoir about their time in SY. Lucid bravely raised his hand, and then life intervened and I was away from here for some months. Well, Lucid has graciously reached out again, and I'm happy to post the first installment. See you all in the comments section! SeekHer




Chapter One: Lucky

Six months have passed since my breakup with Jack but I’m still soaking in a toxic residue I can’t wash away. Inside I’m damaged, in a place I can’t reach to repair. One night I break down and confess to roommate Melissa, “For as long as I can remember I’ve felt somehow protected. Like someone was watching over me. Like an invisible cord connected me to some sustaining force that kept me safe – and now that cord has been cut.”

What I can’t admit is how ashamed I feel, how afraid I am that through my relationship with Jack I’ve cut that cord myself. What I dare not tell her is that through my recklessness I fear I’ve committed the worst crime imaginable: I’ve severed my connection to God.

If I don’t say it, maybe it won’t be true.

The only thing I have to hold onto, which at this point it doesn’t feel like much, is that my intuition turned out to be right. Throughout my relationship with Jack nothing I could point to in terms of what I saw in his behavior ever gave him away, but I learned at the explosive end he’d deceived me – numerous times, in multiple ways. Jack’s skill at deception, I discovered, neared genius.

Each time I ate my humiliation, each time I mustered the nerve to push past my insecurity, carefully express a doubt or try to directly confront him – often right after we’d ravaged each other in bed – he’d pull me close, press his chest to mine and search into my eyes with a look that made me feel like there was no on earth more whose heart he considered more important.

“I don’t know how you think I could be here right now like this with you,” he’d say, his voice low and consoling, “If I had just been with someone else. What kind of monster would I be to be able to do something like that?”

I’d fallen for Jack and fallen hard. I had no visible, tangible proof he wasn’t being honest with me. I also didn’t want to believe what I’d fallen for was a lie. I stayed with Jack because I trusted what I could see and what he said over the sinking feeling that continued its relentless gnawing at my core. I stayed, but the volume kept rising on the voice inside me screaming RUN.

As it turned out, that voice that gnashed at my insides during those final tumultuous months was the one I should have listened to. Instead of listening to that voice, I listened to Jack’s.

So. Lesson learned.

I’m listening to my intuition now, but I’m dead inside. In fact, I might literally be dying. 

Jack and I were never safe. I was so swept away by my attraction to him that I broke that promise to myself. Now I have no reason to believe he was ever safe with any of the other dozen or more people he fucked around with when we were together. Last October, right after our breakup, the counselor at the clinic told me it was too soon to be tested. If I wanted to be certain the results of my HIV test were accurate, she said, I had to wait. I had to come back and be tested in six months. She said that’s how long the virus could hide in my blood, undetected.

I’ve spent the days, weeks and months since receiving my stay of execution in a state of emotional solitary confinement. I haven’t said a word to anyone. Five weeks left. In five weeks I'll need to go back to the clinic. When I think about it my breathing stops. It’s March of 1993; I’m 24 years old.

The previous January, shortly after I learned Gurumayi would be returning to the bay area for a month of spring programs, I was laid off from my job. Bad news, financially, the flip side of which clears my schedule and frees me to plan on attending every talk she delivers – something a commitment to a full time job wouldn’t have allowed.

When April and the first Sunday of daylight savings time arrives, I hop on BART alone and make my way to The Paramount Theatre in Oakland for the “Welcome Gurumayi” program. As the train hums through the tunnel beneath the bay, my mind churns a series of questions: What will it be like to see her after all this time? Will any of this still mean anything to me? Will I realize the experiences I had four years ago when I first met Gurumayi – and all the synchronicities  that followed – had just been imagined, all in my head?

 ----------------

Back in June of 1989, as my mother ushered Melissa and I through the propped doors of the bustling Oakland Ashram, she clutched my hand and whispered a last-minute request: “Just keep an open mind.” 


As we stepped inside, something I wasn’t expecting or even looking for shifted – energetically. My awareness of that shift stopped me just long enough to notice it before the three of us were swallowed inside the excitement of the mobbed ashram lobby.

That night during Gurumayi’s talk, she explained in intricate detail the meaning and purpose of her lineage’s mantra, “Om Namah Shivaya.” She told us the mantra was our Immortal Companion. “The mantra gives you everything,” she said. Gurumayi peppered her talk with several amusing anecdotes and even a full blown shaggy dog story, often laughing harder than anyone else at her own jokes. Her laughter was infectious and spread in giddy ripples through the crowd.

A lot of what Gurumayi said that night went right over my head, but the sound of her voice kept me engaged. Something about her voice reassured me. It felt almost like a balm. 


At the conclusion of her talk, Gurumayi gently pressed her hands together in prayer and bowed her head toward us. The hall went dark and she led us in a long, haunting version of the mantra. As she sang her voice was high, unusual, and sad.


After the meditation session that followed, my mother introduced Melissa and me to Gurumayi during darshan – the ceremony, mom had explained earlier, where people “bow down to Gurumayi as a way of symbolically bowing down to their own inner divinity.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant but it sounded lovely. 

I don’t remember kneeling before Gurumayi that night, or the brush of blessings from her peacock feather wand, but I do remember what she said as she leaned in and locked her eyes with mine: “Your mother has been working very hard.” Her voice was commanding, resonant, masculine in its power. Her words were pointed, certain – as if this was her personal message to me, something she’d been planning to say all along. It was as if she’d been patiently waiting for the day when I would finally come kneel before her and she’d tell me: “Your mother has been working very hard.” Her message felt that important.

Within those seven words, Gurumayi captured in a single astute statement an essential fact about my mother that was true that night, true about the years preceding that night, and remained true. I took Gurumayi’s statement as a gentle but still knowing scold – a reminder I must never take my mother’s role in my life, or anything she’d ever done to make things easier for me, for granted. 

Just beneath the surface of Gurumayi’s statement, a second layer implied my mother had also been doing her own deep spiritual work in that she had been “working very hard” on herself.

Again: was true, had been true, remained true.

Later, when I shared my first darhsan experience with Janice – our fast-track family friend who upon being introduced to Siddha Yoga by my mom in the early 80s promptly moved into the South Fallsburg ashram and soon became one of Gurumayi’s personal assistants – she further affirmed the message I’d received me by adding: “You may not know this, but Gurumayi gave your mother the spiritual name 'Janabai' – and Janabai’s whole life was a life of service. In fact, Janabai worked so hard she had no time for her own devotional practices. In the story of her life it is said that the Lord was so moved by her selflessness he came and sat beside her while she worked – the Lord came to her.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to make from this additional insight from Janice; but it did add another layer of significance to Gurumayi’s message.

That night after darshan, as we collected our shoes from the lobby, I saw a woman standing in front of a TV monitor propped on a rolling cart, watching a remote video feed of the ceremony still going on inside. She swayed back and forth, hands clasped over her heart, her eyes swimming in tears. Despite the commotion and post-program buzz swirling around her, she was oblivious to anything going on outside of what she saw on that TV screen. I stood a few feet away and gawked. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be so moved by something they were viewing over a remote monitor.

Two nights later I returned with my mom to the Oakland Ashram for another evening program – at the last minute Melissa said she wasn’t feeling well and told us she thought it would be better if she stayed behind.


That evening we began chanting before Gurumayi arrived – “Jay Jay Vitthala, Jaya Hare Vitthala.”

The melody the musicians played during the intro to the chant had a haunting, almost funereal quality that drew me right in. As the rhythm of the chant gradually built in intensity, the lights dimmed and Gurumayi emerged in silence from behind a thick velvet curtain. The moment I saw her shadowy blue silhouette I began to weep. I didn’t know what triggered the sudden wave of emotion, but before long I was sobbing and couldn’t stop. I wanted to leave, I wanted to run from the hall and escape to someplace private. But packed so tightly alongside all the other chanters there was no unobtrusive escape. And, since this was my “first time meeting Gurumayi,” the hall monitor had seated me just a few rows from her chair – I felt there was no respectful way to exit. My only consolation was the fact that the chant was dominated by amplified tablas that helped drown out my bawling.

I cried forever. It was as if the floodgates holding back every last drop of regret, grief or pain I’d been unconsciously storing away inside over the years, maybe over lifetimes, finally burst. My eyes burned. My jaw went numb. As the tingling shot down my neck and into my shoulders, I remembered the first dream I’d had about Gurumayi, just a month earlier, in which she held my face in her hands and kissed my forehead – I remembered that my jaw went numb in my dream too.

Doing my best to avoid elbowing my neighbors, I dislodged myself from my jacket and used its sleeves in lieu of the Kleenex I didn’t think to stash in my pockets beforehand. I hadn't sobbed like that since I was a child. Maybe ever. By the end of the chant my jacket was a soaked, snotty ball. Physically, I felt like a wrung washcloth; my insides were pulp.

I don’t remember what Gurumayi spoke about that night; I don’t remember darshan, either. But I do remember what happened as I walked into the dining hall with my mom afterward: The chattering crowds in the Amrit engulfed us just as they had after the previous night’s program, but this time everything was different. As I looked around everyone appeared to be moving underwater, their gestures liquid, their voices muffled into a low, dull hum. Amidst all the commotion I felt anchored, calm, completely still, the chaos around me reduced to a swarm of softly buzzing atoms.

I stood there a moment, dumbstruck.

Noticing the shift in my expression my mom leaned in, took my hand and asked, “Are you okay?” 

“Everything is so different,” I said. She gripped my hand tightly and smiled, “I know.”

I had gone through the looking glass . . .

That was 1989. I had just moved to San Francisco. The experience of meeting Gurumayi just as I was embarking on a new life in a new city seemed to catapult me into the series of fortunate events – the job offer that followed my first interview, the groovy apartment Melissa and I landed near the Haight, the name of the new suitor on my dance card making my heart race. I was on a high I rode the entire summer.

But that was four years ago. Back then I used to wake up each beautiful morning with the beautiful feeling everything was going my way.

What will it be like to see Gurumayi now?

Welcome to Siddha Yoga! Please have your lawyer sign here...and here...and here.

The shoe room is straight ahead.

I Don't Understand

Was it always this treacly and meaningless? Or has it finally devolved to this?

I remember bringing a newbie, a good friend, to a summer program in Fallsburg in the late 1990's and after Gurumayi's talk he said: "Yes, but everything she said is just feel good common sense." I smiled thinking, ah you poor thing, what you don't understand is that the Guru's Shakti is behind those common words and humble phrases and new-agey ideas and THAT is what will give you the power to actually attain what others only dream about doing.

Oh, Lord.

40 Ways to Leave Your (Divine) Lover

While we've been reminiscing about the long, strange fall from grace that Siddha Yoga has suffered these past ten years, a parallel process may have begun over in Amritananda Mayi land. As reported in Guruphiliac, the longtime personal assistant of the hugging saint (as Amritananda is affectionately known) fled her 20-year gig and her Guru's ashram under cover of darkness. After many years spent hiding and in silence, Gail Tredwell found her way to the exAmma Yahoo chat board, joined the site and "came out" to the community a year or so ago with an open letter that details 40 reasons why she left. She is currently writing a book about her experiences.

I've excerpted her letter below, which can be read in its entirety on the French website Le Blog Des Infidèles. The blog owner has also posted an interview with Gayatri, or Gail, there (in English). And any of you who may miss the "the Guru is an omniscient being who is beyond being judged by the standards of normal human behavior" line of bunk, there is a very long and belabored and nine-kinds-of-crazy example posted by an unhinged individual by the likely name of Ram Das in the comments section of the same blog.

Lastly, and because no yogic path scandal would be complete without a major magazine exposé! here is a link to the Rolling Stone article on Amma, which also covers Tredwell's defection.

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

To explain for those who don't know who I am/was. I  was Amma's personal attendant for 20 years. I arrived in Jan. 1980 when she was Sudhamani living with her parents and left in Nov. 1999. I was nicknamed 'Amma's shadow' because I was constantly by her side and lived in her quarters. I can speak fluent Malayalam so language was never a barrier to understand what was going on. It would not be an exaggeration to say I know her better than anyone in the world.


A few days after I escaped, when I was still in hiding, feeling hunted I sat at my laptop and wrote down the reasons why I chose to leave. I wrote them as a reminder in case I ever forgot. After writing it 12 years ago I read it again for the first time just now. I have not edited it...thought I should leave it in it's raw state. Hopefully, this will answer some of your questions.

Reasons why I left the Ashram
1. Loss of faith
2. Not happy for years
3. No harmony amongst seniors
4. No manners from the seniors
5. Too much politics between the seniors
6. No love between the seniors
7. I felt extremely unloved
8. And unsupported
9. And untrusted
10. Absolutely worn out on every level
11. Too much stress
12. Routine too gruelling
13. Never any concern given for physical well being nor emotions which are alsoa very important part of spirituality
14. Partiality shown between the men and women, east and west, rich and poor
15. Swamis arrogance, back stabbing, cruelty, hatred, power struggles.
16. Amma's obvious favouritism towards them
17. Giving too much money and gold to her family members and at the same timedenied Suneeti private hospitalisation.
18. Too many secret things going on.
19. Too much scheming, plotting, planning and suspicion
20. No sweet spiritual feeling of love or compassion from amma behind the scenesonly anger, gossip, criticism, revenge, suspicion, business, violence or secretmeetings with the swamis.
21. Terrorism - in a subtle sense not with guns or anything.
22. Violence (mental, emotional, psychological and physical.
23. Horrible yelling and shrieking like a demon
24. Constant accusing me of being a good for nothing and always angry at mewhich always would make my guts cringe and constantly putting me down.
25. Not allowed to feel happy, if you do you should be guilty
26. Guilt if you rest, laugh, take care of your body
27. Money, money, money that is the main aim and you are good if you try andmake as much as you can for the ashram even if you squeeze. Amma used to praisepeople for this
28. Lying, cheating
29. Copying from other writers and books then using amma's name on them andcalling it her teachings. Also none of the speeches which were made at U.N. orChicago were her own, they were Swamijis from some books or possibly his headthat I don't know.
30. Having to tell untrue miracles in talks, she herself would make them up forus.
31. Worn out from heat and crowds and the culture of India, also the jail likelifestyle in the Indian ashram
32. Suppressed and oppress and even hit and abused constantly by the swamis.
33. Too many institutions and projects but not enough capable people to runthem, therefore endless problems which would then fall on my head.
34. Never been understood, or acknowledges for any participation which I had inthe ashram. Never been considered in any major decisions to be made even if itwas which girls should get yellow. Even that swamiji would try and decide,until I would put my foot down.
35. Not enough protection given to girls sent to branches. Just go! Whether theyhave a place to stay or not no problem, whether they are by themselves in a hugeschool overnight, no problem.
36. No questions allowed. Just shut your mouth or you will be considered fortreason, betrayal and a cheat, you are unloyal to amma and the ashram.
37. Scandalous the way the flats have been built, so much money charged, nomaintenance even though the people pay the same. D block has been built rightin the face of A and B. The buildings were not even finished properly withcracks everywhere and sloppy cement everywhere. Plumbing stinks and leaks allover the steps. Try and maintain and keep clean the existing ones beforestarting more skyscrapers.
38. The residents i.e. Indian are not fed properly. They are also overworked.Even amma would criticize that some girls were drinking milk, she would tell tosell all the fruit and not to give the residents. I would still give it now andthen. They all look so anemic.
39. Amma's obvious revenge and hatred towards anybody who has left the ashram. Getting even with them, not allowing them to move on or get a job `let themsuffer for a while' her famous quote. Where is understanding and forgiveness,compassion that she teaches so strongly about. Okay, yes she doesn't want toencourage anybody to leave but is keeping them in the ashram by fear of thefuture or the consequences healthy.
40. Only Hinduism is any good, narrow minded attitude of the swamis againstChristianity. Only your guru is any good.

I understand that my list of reasons was vague....like I said it was written years ago when I was in a state of trauma. Without going into too much detail I will try to clarify some of your questions.  Many of the topics have been covered in detail in my book and will give a clear and rounded understanding with specific details and examples.
Yours sincerely, Gail a.k.a. Gayatri

The Long Slow Fall of Enchantment

I just discovered Google trends. It's a tool that allows you to track how often people have searched for something on Google, all over the world, since 2004. I confess I mostly use it to feed my schadenfreude—looking up, for instance, how Romney as a search term fell right off the chart just after the last American Presidential election (yes, shocking, I'm petty that way.)

And then I thought to use it to see how popular Siddha Yoga and Gurumayi are as search terms now versus 2004—which coincidentally happens to be the year G gave her last New Year's message talk before disappearing into semi-retirement. The results can be taken as snapshots of just how much interest in the path has declined over the past nine years.

Below is a screen shot of the chart for the search term Siddha Yoga, the actual chart can be found here.

The first thing to note is that the chart is not displaying actual data, i.e. it doesn't graph the number of times people searched for "Siddha Yoga" at each point on the graph. Rather, it shows relative values. The highest point, the one at which the most people searched for the term, is labeled 100%. All the other points are a percentage of that peak search volume. In the above example the highest point is the very first one on the graph. If you hover your cursor over that point on the actual web page it will show this:

All the other points represent a percentage of this highwater mark, and they all show a decline in search volume. Looking at recent data, the search volume for "Siddha Yoga" in December 2012 was 25%. That means "Siddha Yoga" was entered as a search term only one-quarter of the number of times last month versus the peak in 2004. The January number is 42% (as of this writing) but likely to drop as it is only based on six days of data this month, and inflated by those faithful looking for this year's "Sweet Surprise" message (Japa Mantra, in case you haven' heard.)

Now, let's look at how Gurumayi is doing as a search term, again, screen shot of chart below, the actual chart can be found here:

Here, the peak search volume (or 100% mark) can be found at August 2010, which just happens to be when "Eat, Pray, Love" was released—and when the Salon.com article was published revealing the connection between Gurumayi and the Guru depicted in Gilbert's best-selling book and movie (we all remember that flame war in Salon, don't we? Good times.) If that point in the graph were removed, the chart would show a high-water mark at March 2004, and an erratic but fairly steady decline since (similar to the chart for Siddha Yoga). That spike in Aug 2010, however, shows how badly SYDA bungled the opportunity to use the release of that wildly popular movie starring America's sweetheart to its advantage. By lying to the press and faithful and disavowing any connection between Gurumayi and Gilbert, they lost control of the narrative and were dragged through a hugely messy online battle when Salon put the pieces together for them. How badly disorganized did Siddha Yoga have to be, how completely out of touch (if not out of reach) did G have to be, for them to make such a monumentally foolish decision? The mind boggles.

The uptick for Gurumayi for January 2013 is at 47% which, again, is only partial data but undoubtedly linked to online registrations for the "Sweet Surprise" message. Oddly, the December 2012 percentage for Gurumayi was only 19%, the second lowest since the 2004 peak volume. This is certainly surprising given that this came during the time when the darshan videos of Gurumayi's holiday program at South Fallsburg were uploaded—and heavily promoted at centers around the world. What that suggests is that the faithful knew where to go and how to type the syda web address into their address bars. New people were not attracted to search online to find for the videos, which speaks to the current state of outreach (non-existent).

There are other interesting facts to be gleaned from both these charts. If you look at the world map beneath each chart you can see where the searches originated around the globe. The darker the shade of blue, the more searches. Siddha Yoga seems to be most popular in India, followed by Australia, then the US. Gurumayi is also most popular (as a search term) in India, followed by Mexico and the the US. However, Australia isn't even on her map. I guess those Aussie devotees have fully imbibed the "don't use the Guru's name lest you soil it" teaching.

Also, you can click on any area of the map for a detailed look at how the results play out in that region of the world. Here is what you find if you click on India on the Gurumayi trend map:

Interesting that Gurumayi was basically off the chart in her home base of India until 2011, with no searches at all. Then we see erratic jumps of interest in the past year or two. Wonder what has been heating up in Ganeshpuri?

Lastly, who is winning the hearts and minds of Siddha yogis and yoginis everywhere over time? It looks like SYDA's effort to push G to the sidelines and rebrand the rudderless path as simply Siddha Yoga has born fruit. Gurumayi's name has consistently been searched less than half as often as the term Siddha Yoga since 2004.

Even for an ego-less being like Gurumayi, that's gotta sting.