Shri Mataji's Unique Discovery

It is often said that Shri Mataji made the "Unique Discovery" of how to give en masse Self Realisation on the morning of 5 May 1970. However, Shri Mataji did not give Self Realisation to anybody until late January 1972, and then only to 12 people out of a group of over 25. This was at a meditation camp at Bordi, a small fishing village near Nargol. The following description by one of the first 12 shows that they were individually touched by Shri Mataji and had been the recipients of Shri Mataji's previous kundalini-raising efforts:

My personal experience of awakening of Kundalini took place in the first week of January 1972. Mataji touched the six plexuses for a few seconds and powerful force started rising from plexus to plexus and ultimately to the brain. While this was going on, I was very deep in meditation. Mataji finished her job in seconds and I was going very deep into Dhyana with immense joy and pleasing sensations all over my body. My eyes could not be opened and meditation continued. My body was warmer. I was with myself as if fully drunk, but completely conscious. Later on Dhyana was even more interesting and deep. On the 27th January 1972 at Bordi Mataji told me to close my eyes and touched by Sahasrar. Within seconds she said, "Realised!" She asked me to think, but I could not keep the link even for a few seconds. Afterwards I went to sleep. (Rajabai Modi, cited in G. de Kalbermatten's The Advent p 41-2)

What happened at Bordi in January 1972 was not en masse Self Realisation, this only started later when her followers began to give 'Realisation' to others using her photograph and when she began to hold mass meetings.

Shri Mataji's capacity to grant en masse Self Realisation is supposed to set her apart from all other gurus and prove that she is the incarnation of the Supreme Goddess. In the same way, Muktananda's followers hold that his making shaktipat "available to the whole world .... shows both an enormous break with tradition - and it shows a wealth of spiritual power to be available to the Siddha Yoga Gurus."

It is also interesting that Shri Mataji has tried to deny that shaktipat is a traditional Indian term and has falsely claimed that Muktananda's 1200 year old Kashmiri Shaiva tradition was derived from her:

You see, how this knowledge has come, when I went to America, they got all these things about chakras and vibrations. The word 'vibration' started through that. Imagine! They did not know a word about it and Kundalini and everything, then Muktananda took a cue from there and started talking about it. They never talked about it. (25.3.81 Darshan at Ashram Part 2)

The monumental A Survey of Hinduism (1994) by the renowned Professor Klaus Klostermaier records that

The earliest writings [of Kasmir Saivism , the most important North-Indian school of Saivism] belong to the eighth or ninth centuries, but the roots of the system may be several centuries older....[It teaches that] In individuals sakti is present as Kundalini, represented as a coiled dormant snake. The innermost core of human being is caitanya, consciousness, identical with Siva. Sakti-pata, descent of sakti, is the advent of grace. (p 271)

Although Muktananda certainly did not copy from Shri Mataji, there is undoubtedly a striking similarity between Shri Mataji's supposedly 'Unique Discovery' and the following claims of Muktananda's followers:

Shaktipat is a transmission of divine energy, a spiritual initiation that many people say has given them an immediate and direct experience of God. The spiritual masters of ancient times reserved this initiation for just a few disciples who had been purified, strengthened, and tested through years of service.

Swami Muktananda, however, would sometimes initiate thousands in a single week. The diverse experiences of those who received shaktipat testify to the undiluted power of this initiation. However it happened in person or through a photo or mantra, in a formal meeting or at a chance encounter at a gas station, the Guru's grace could be life-changing. (Hinduism Today, April 1995)

Although Rajneesh's recorded speeches refer to Shri Mataji as his ex-disciple, in talking about her Sahaja Yoga he said that "she got the idea from Muktananda". This may well refer to the practice of mass initiation as well as the goal of becoming a mega-guru. According to the Siddha Mahayoga FAQ, there are other gurus besides Shri Mataji and Muktananda who take the non-traditional attitude of "Initiate them all and let shakti sort them out."

Shri Mataji does not deny that other gurus such as Muktananda and Rajneesh are able to produce intense experiences in their followers, but she claims that these are negative experiences produced by the use of evil spirits. However, we have received testimony from a Sahaja Yogi who previously was associated with Muktananda's followers who says that the kundalini experiences with both groups are the same.

Swami Kripananda, a former literature professor, recalled the impact of her first experience of Muktananda as follows:

I felt something indescribable in my chest, as if someone had blasted dynamite, and an inner realm emerged. I experienced waves of love so powerful that I cried for two weeks. The experience of those waves of divine love lasted for a year.

Another follower of Muktananda (aka Baba) wrote that he

felt a force rising up my spine ... This force would rise and fall and each time ... This happened over and over again. After these experiences quieted down, I became totally overwhelmed with love, a type of love that I had never experienced before. It was an independent love, and although it came from Baba, it was not only limited to him. It embraced the entire world. I had never experienced this kind of love before, not in my family, not with my girlfriends, not in any way at all. Yet it was the most familiar feeling to me and the sweetest feeling that I had ever had.

If these experiences were described by a Sahaja Yogi they would be accepted as manifestations of Shri Mataji's divine grace, yet Muktananda is condemned by Shri Mataji as a demon. If demons can produce experiences of divine love in others, then the experiences that Shri Mataji initiates cannot be taken as proof of her divinity.

There are also reports of shaktipat curing terrible illnesses and bringing about various miracles. However, Muktananda and Siddha Yoga have received criticisms from ex-members that a remarkably similar to those levelled against Shri Mataji and Sahaja Yoga.

The following extracts from an open letter about Siddha Yoga (aka SYDA) by ex-members would only need a few words changed to describe the experiences of ex-Sahaja Yogis:

We had devoted ourselves and made Siddha Yoga our life . We came to Siddha Yoga because we wished to enrich our spiritual lives. At first, some of us had extraordinary meditation experiences; others felt they had found at long last a community of understanding seekers. As we got more involved, we came to believe that Gurumayi and Muktananda had valid claims to "full enlightenment," "perfection," and "sainthood". In fact, we believed them to be living deities.

With the awakening of the kundalini through shaktipat, we felt that we had reached the final stage of human evolution before divine perfection. All we had to do is love, believe in, and worship the guru, no matter what, and enlightenment would be ours. Our faith in these concepts led us to make Siddha Yoga the most important part of our lives. Yet, as we drew closer to the guru, we discovered that both Muktananda and Gurumayi had private personalities that were in sharp contrast to their public personas.

At great cost to our own integrity, we learned to ignore or derail the natural flow of our thoughts and feelings -- so that we could reconcile to ourselves and others the discrepancies between the gurus' claims to perfection and their actual behavior. Time and again we were told that "surrender" was the path of a true disciple; that "gossip" would only lead us to destruction. This meant subordinating our thoughts, feelings and subjective experience in favor of a supposedly greater truth and higher purpose, represented by the guru . We were frightened at first when we began to question and doubt; we feared we would lose everything if we didn't keep suppressing our thoughts and feelings, if we didn't blindly obey. But we have found exactly the opposite to be true: by finally telling the truth to ourselves and to others, we are regaining the precious freedom we had lost. We are aware that most people who are inspired by the outer beauty of Siddha Yoga and its practices and teachings will find it hard to believe what we have witnessed. It is not our intention here to attempt to explain the apparent benevolence at the surface layer of Siddha Yoga. The authors of this letter have spent a great deal of time beneath the public façade, and we have seen a more complete picture of the secret Siddha Yoga and the double life of its leaders than most people ever see. We believe the corruption at SYDA should be exposed ... Clearly, it is worth a great deal of money to SYDA to try to hide the facts.

What we present here is what we know to be true. It is our hope that those who read this will be open to hearing the truth, and to making an informed choice about their participation.

Mixed messages are ubiquitous in Siddha Yoga in the disguise of spiritual truths. "Respect, love and honor the Self," but remember: you owe everything to the guru, you can call nothing your own, only the guru matters, and you are nothing without her. "The Guru is a perfect mirror," so remember: any complaint, criticism or question you have is simply a reflection of your own impurity.

Even if Gurumayi were perfected or enlightened, which is certainly not the case, her "mission" would never justify the secret deception and cruelty ... If we close our eyes and ears and mouths to this deception and cruelty; if we retreat to an idealized, magical realm of consciousness and refuse to see and hear those who have been abused and betrayed; if we keep saying "that wasn't my experience," "it didn't happen to me," and "I've never been involved at that level"; or perhaps worst of all, "I know about these things, but I have found a way to accept them;" then we ourselves are perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

It is painful to realize now how we were seduced, step by step, into sacrificing our truth, our values, our morals, our reality, and our very sense of self to protect and defend Muktananda and Gurumayi. They preyed on our longing and our vulnerability and we tried to mold ourselves to be what they required of us. We thought if we just chanted more Guru Gitas, gave more money smiled more, took one more Intensive, dressed this way instead of that way, gave the right gift, told the right joke, did the right trick; then maybe the guru would grace us with her approval and validate our existence. When we finally caught our breath, we were amazed to discover how many lies we had told, how Siddha Yoga had taught us to let fear, shame and guilt run our lives.

We no longer need to betray our own integrity, trying to get love from a guru whose love is tainted by her need to control and exploit others. After many years, we've learned that our healthiest response to Siddha Yoga has been to leave it.. We now know it is not in Gurumayi's or anyone else's power to grant enlightenment. Grace is in each of us to do that for ourselves, each in our own way. Had the climate for telling the truth existed in the ashram, perhaps this letter would not have to be written. But Gurumayi and her swamis are not telling the truth about sexual abuse and about many other matters. It is sad to witness senior members of the Siddha Yoga community lying. While we recognize the importance of examining the weaknesses in ourselves that led us to become entrapped, this in no way diminishes the fact that Siddha Yoga is fraudulent at the core.

As we continue to free ourselves of Siddha Yoga, we are getting back in touch with a fuller range of our feelings. This has been difficult, because we worked so hard to limit ourselves only to the narrow range of feelings considered acceptable on the "spiritual path." We are becoming reunited with our intellect, which we were encouraged to still, focus and numb out of existence, at least in part so as to blind ourselves to the deception and hypocrisy we found ...

They demonstrate a belief they hold in common with other totalitarian systems: that their agenda justifies any kind of behavior, no matter how destructive. We have learned that we can speak no criticism of the guru without instantly being shunned, avoided and labeled mentally unbalanced by those who remain loyal to SYDA. We mourn the loss of friends and family we still care deeply for. We hope they will someday allow themselves to know the truth about Siddha Yoga, and that they will cease to allow themselves to be deceived and silenced.

Sincerely, Some People Who Have Left Siddha Yoga

This letter is an independent publication which is not sponsored by any organization, or any group or person associated with any other teacher or guru.