The Abode of Yoga

Though it drives many of my readers crazy when I say it, I am and will always be grateful to Sri Chinmoy. He changed my life for the better. That's an objective fact. I may not know much, but I do know who I was before I joined the Center and who I had become by the time I decided to leave it. I was a better person. For that, I'll always be grateful. A lot of my friends have argued that Guru did nothing, that he added no value to our lives as disciples. In effect, they're arguing that whatever good experiences we had -- whatever progress we may have made in our personal development -- was the result of our own efforts, our own self-discipline. I've no doubt this is true for them. It's not so for me. For a few years in the mid-1980s, I experienced an exalted sense of being. Was it actually exalted? It felt that way to me, and Guru made it possible. I'm not selling myself short. I played a part in my own experience, obviously, and perhaps the most important par...

I take my coffee black. I prefer it that way, without the milk and sugar that makes it so much easier to get addicted to in the beginning. I feel the same about religion. Magic and magical thinking are the milk and sugar of spirituality. It's what makes embarking on a religious life so attractive in the beginning. Perhaps it's even necessary at the start, even though in the end it becomes a disability. Like the old analogy of the two thorns -- sometimes it's necessary to use one thorn (or negative quality) to help extract another one stuck in your foot. Perhaps stories of saints, miracles, and the supernatural are necessary in the beginning to inspire one to tread the path of yoga. In the end, though, belief in these stories -- magic as I call it -- must be discarded, just as one discards the second thorn after it has helped you remove the one in your foot. I'm not saying that the path of conscious personal development -- the path of yoga -- need be bitter like the co...

It's not a perfect example. The cancer eating away at the Catholic Church isn't the same as that corroding the Center. But it's instructive. Particularly in how the organization is now cooperating -- perhaps reluctantly -- with independent investigators to bring the truth to light. According to this New York Times article , after decades of turning a blind eye, the Vatican appointed a veteran clerical diplomat to address the scandal in Ireland. An Irish governmental Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was then established and the Irish Archbishop then began to cooperate. The full Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin can be found here . The report is long, but it's worth a few minutes to scroll through the first section and skim through the commission's mandate and its broad findings, some of which seem particularly apropos to the situation now facing the Center's leadership. Of particular interest is the organizational ...

Have you ever heard of the Alipore bomb case? On April 30, 1908, two Indian revolutionaries tried to kill a British magistrate known for handing down harsh sentences against other freedom fighters. They missed their target. The bomb they threw landed in the wrong carriage, killing the wife and daughter of an English barrister. Within just a couple of days, the British arrested 33 suspects, including the suspected ring leader, Aurobindo Ghosh . Aurobindo, who was educated at King's College, Cambridge University, retained the pro bono services of the hitherto unknown defense lawyer Chittaranjan Das. C.R. Das, pictured, faced an uphill battle. The trial lasted a year, included more than 200 witnesses, and more than 5,000 exhibits. On top of it all, he had a client who was his intellectual equal. You might think that having a smart client would be an asset to the trial lawyer. Oftentimes, however, the client thinks he knows best and can't resist being a backseat driver at the tria...

If you haven't yet taken the time to view Karen Armstrong's presentation below, I'd encourage you to do so. It's about 25 minutes long and touches on many of the important issues facing us all. (Hat tip to my sister Liz for suggesting the video, and to this anonymous commenter for suggesting Ms. Armstrong's work more generally.) In her talk, Ms. Armstrong uses a story from the Iliad to underscore the importance of sympathy and compassion. It just so happens that I watched the movie Troy last night and was moved very much by that very scene as dramatized by Peter O'Toole and Brad Pitt . If you're not already familiar with the story or have not already watched the movie, the setup for the scene below is that the great Greek hero Achilles (Pitt) has just killed the great Trojan hero Hector in battle. After killing Hector, Achilles drags Hector's body behind his chariot and back to the Greek camp. Under the dead of night, the king of Troy, Priam (O...

The time for former women disciples to come together, "in numbers too big to ignore" as Helen Reddy sings in her famous song, is now. With the huge exception of Jayanti Tamm -- and her book Cartwheels in a Sari -- there have been precious few examples of what the disciple life was like from a woman's perspective. That should change. There are now scores of women who spent significant time in the Center leading extremely disciplined lives, who are now living outside the shadow of the Center, standing on their own, each of whom have distinct and unique voices. I'd really like to hear from them (you all know who you are). And I don't mean just in guest posts here (though I love them). What I'm really advocating is a site for women, by women. Something like a spiritual Double X site . I take inspiration again from Jayanti, who is perhaps laying the foundation for such a site at her blog -- read the latest lion's roar here . That's Helen Reddy in the pho...

We've already discussed the Oliver Sipple principle . The principle being that I have no intention of disclosing the names of women currently in the Center (or out of the Center for that matter) who have been implicated in Guru's sex ring. Like most rules, however, the Sipple principle admits an exception. In the gay rights context, it seems that most people don't have a big problem " outing " a person's private sexual orientation when hypocrisy is involved. The cleanest example of this would be a right-wing, "family values" politician who actively works against the interests of gays, but in private is a closeted homosexual. That's hypocritical. In cases like that, there doesn't appear to be a groundswell of sympathy for keeping the hypocritical politician's private life private. Better to out him. The exception applies here, too. It's one thing for our sister disciples to be going about the tough business of trying to lead a life i...

Here's a disturbing blog post by Jayanti. If you haven't yet read her wonderful memoir, Cartwheels in a Sari , please go out and do so. It's a wonderful and moving read. And if you haven't yet read my own early history with Jayanti, you can look back here . Thanks for the post, Jayanti.

To a blogger, the promise of the comment function located at the bottom of each post is like the Siren's call . It lures you in with notions of fair dialogue, engaging discussions, and interesting Socratic clashes of thought. Then you're dashed on the rocks. The reality is, left unchecked, unmoderated online comment forums quickly devolve into havens of the angry and the deranged. Thus, one's first instinct is to moderate. In the early going, moderating blog comments is not a bad solution. When you start, traffic to your blog isn't typically very heavy and neither are the comments. But once you've built a forum that attracts interesting comments by earnest and informed readers -- once you've built an audience -- a phenomena seemingly unique to the Internet occurs. The trolls are born. Wikipedia defines the term this way: In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as...

Have you heard of Oliver Sipple? Oliver Sipple was a United States Marine and a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War. On September 22, 1975, he joined a large group of people gathered outside of a hotel in San Francisco waiting for then-President Gerald R. Ford, who was inside the hotel, to emerge. As President Ford exited the hotel and headed for his limousine, Oliver Sipple noticed the woman standing next to him pull out a gun and point it towards the President. "The bitch has a gun," he screamed and instinctively grabbed the woman's arm as the shot rang out. The shot went wide, wounding a bystander, and Oliver Sipple was feted as a hero. (His Wikipedia entry is here .) Oliver Sipple also happened to be gay. Thinking -- probably correctly -- that it would do the public some good to know that the man who had courageously saved the President's life was gay, pioneering gay activist (and later San Francisco Supervisor) Harvey Milk leaked Oliver Sipple's sex...

I do not wish to recount the details of what happened to me. It is the same story as Suchatula’s, who is one of my best friends and with whom I have been suffering through all this. How things might have been different had one of us just shared our story with the other? That is what I would like to write about here. For those who do not believe our stories, I want to explain my feelings. So much has been written already. It has taken me almost three years to leave the center. Even this I did not do on my own. Before I even managed to share my pain with my parents, Ashrita had informed them that their daughter was out of the center. Because of my complete faith in Guru, I did my best and accepted that, somehow, what he had asked me to do was okay. But it wasn’t easy. I had to fight so hard with myself. I had to convince myself that this thing Guru asked of me, which was so against my spiritual, religious, mental and human views, was okay. At the same time, I felt so bad, so guilty for d...

It’s been 37 years since I joined Guru’s Path in 1972. I never thought the day would come that I would be telling this story, but I guess it’s time. Before I start though, I just want to say that I have no regrets, only gratitude to my Guru for making me the person I am today, for sharing his precious life with me and for giving me an opportunity to serve him and my fellow disciples through his music. I also want to say that I came into the world only for the spiritual life, it’s all I ever wanted and all I will ever want. To all the wonderful disciples I have loved and laughed and cried with over these years, I love you and I always will. Please know you will be in my heart forever. I am sorry that the way we have been taught makes it impossible for us to continue walking along the same road together. It’s so sad we are forced to cast people out of our hearts and lives who have served the Supreme side-by-side with us for decades. But unfortunately that’s the way it has been set ...

" There's nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that ." ~ Al Pacino as Lt. Col. Frank Slade in The Scent of a Woman At some point in my early disciple life, I read or heard Guru say that after his death, the Center as an organization would implode. The implosion began this morning in San Francisco. In truth, though, it's more like a cancer than an implosion. Like pancreatic or liver cancer -- which exhibit few symptoms until it's too late to do anything about -- the poison of Guru's exploitation of his female disciples metastasized seemingly in secret. Sure, there were warning signs. Sevika , Rupavati , and Phulela all spoke publicly and courageously. Guru was alive then, however, and they were easily dismissed. Then Guru died . Since then -- with cancerous cells lodged in every vital center of the Center organization -- it's just been a matter of time. If there was any doubt about the diagnosis, it wa...

"Even though my guru frequents a grog shop, still to me he is the embodiment of eternal bliss." ~ Sri Ramakrishna A long time ago, an old disciple friend of mine was telling me about a family crisis. Apparently, his younger sister, who was still in high school, was dating an African-American classmate. They were preparing to go to the prom or something. The problem? Their mom -- an old fashioned, practicing Catholic -- didn't want her daughter dating a black guy. So, both sides of the family appealed to my friend, the eldest son, for help. My friend, of course, sided with his little sister and tried to talk sense to their mom. He pleaded with her to be fair. He used logic. Finally, he appealed to his mom's religious sensibilities. What would Jesus do, he asked. Her response was classic: "If Jesus Christ himself came down off the cross and told me to accept it," she said, "I still would not accept it." The absurdity of this situation aside, there...

Like most bloggers, I utilize a service to let me know how much traffic my blog generates. The service I use -- Statcounter.com -- is great and free, but it doesn't tell me personal information about you, per se. It does tell me -- based on your IP address -- where in the world you (or your computer anyway) resides. And that's how the map above was produced. This type of map is nothing new to most of us who surf the net regularly, but it's still pretty cool to look at. Since most of my readers are current and former disciples (I suspect), the worldwide scope of my readership says more about the scope of Guru's reach when he was alive than it does about my popularity. In any event, it's inspired me to reach out to you all to solicit ideas about where the blog goes from here. What topic or topics do you think still need to be addressed? At the moment, the only remaining topic(s) I'm inspired to write about concern the role of women in the modern yoga movement an...

It's a horrible truth to face. The idea that all that time I was earnestly leading a celibate life, Guru himself was having sex with his female disciples. That when my innocent, sibling-like relationship with Jayanti was brought to his attention, Guru felt compelled to warn me about inappropriate conduct, while he himself was sleeping with his own spiritual daughters. In hindsight, it's not the sex that bothers me. It's the deceit. The sheer scale of the deceit is what leaves me reeling even now. With every new revelation -- and there are more to come -- the scope of Guru's gopi network becomes more apparent. Yet, I owe everything to Guru. Whatever else might be said about Guru's deception and misconduct, it didn't affect his ability to prime my spiritual life , to effect my occult transformation , or on a more mundane level to give me some much needed positive reinforcement. So, that's the conundrum I've been wrestling with. How to square the eviden...

It's all in your head. That's the idea I've been toying with for a while anyway -- that there's a neurological component to yoga, which thus far has not gotten the attention I think it deserves. I suspect that this is because so much of our metaphysical lexicon -- the vocabulary of yoga -- is rooted in the past. Adopting a scientific approach to understanding our yogic development might promise more precision. For example, if I told a room full of new agers that I'd developed some conscious control over my muladhara chakra , I suspect we'd have a room full of people all with very different takes on what I'd meant by that statement. The term is old and imprecise and not really susceptible to examination through evidence. But if I told a room full of people that I'd developed some conscious control over my amygdelae , they'd have a fairly uniform understanding of what I'd meant (or they would after first checking its definition on Wikipedia!). So...