The Abode of Yoga

Introduction

2009-11-29T20:44:00.000-08:00

Twenty-eight years ago, I became a disciple of the late Sri Chinmoy. My discipleship lasted nine years and they were some of the best years of my life and, without a doubt, the most significant.

This memoir is about that journey and the enduring effects it had on me as a man.

It's also about a number of troubling revelations of sexual misconduct by Sri Chinmoy, which have been made by an increasing number of his female disciples, and how those revelations have affected my understanding of my guru.

It's not all doom and gloom, and I'd argue none of it is. I've met some truly unique and special individuals during the course of my spiritual development. I hope to introduce you to some of them.

Most importantly, I want to give you a glimpse of my experience. I hope it will inspire other current and former disciples to write their own memoirs.

Together, I'd like to think that someday our collective stories will make up a mosaic that will give future seekers a complete and diverse picture of what it was actually like to be a disciple of Sri Chinmoy.

Below, you'll find a table of contents or you can always use the links on the left.

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Yogaloy

Please don't hesitate to write me with questions, comments, criticisms or corrections at yogaloy@yahoo.com. I'd love to hear from you all.

2009-11-29T20:30:00.000-08:00

BOOK ONE

I. Mahasamadhi.

1. A New Beginning.
2. A New York Goodbye.
3. Guru's Death.

II. Growing Up.

4. David Moretti.
5. Three Muskateers.
6. The Book.
7. Camp de Mar.
8. Shame as a Driving Force.
9. On to High School.

III. Searching for More.

10. The Seed Begins to Sprout.
11. Prahlad.
12. The Last Straw.
13. Awakening.
14. Novitiate.
15. Prakash.

IV. Early Days on the Path.

16. First Steps on the Path.
17. School Days.
18. A New York Dream.
19. Idolatry.
20. New York at Last.
21. Goodbye.
22. Tightening the Screws.
23. Planning.
24. A New Leader.
25. Alo Devi.
26. Making the Grade.
27. April '83.
28. "Outer" Graduation.

V. Coming Into My Own.

29. Rick.
30. Names.
31. Made Man.
32. God's Banner.
33. Back Home.
34. December 1983.
35. Phanindra.
36. A New Year.
37. The Summer Games.
38. Jigisha.

VI. Closer to New York.

39. Pulin.
40. The Gospel.
41. Anugata.
42. Rick Gets His Name.
43. My Worst Quality.
44. I Don't Get My Name.
45. I Get My Name.
46. I Become a New Yorker.

VII. Finally with the Master.

47. A Day in the Park.
48. Personal Mythology.
49. The 200 Pound Lift.
50. The 200 Mile Race.
51. Slowing Down for Context.
52. At the Gates of Trance.
53. Jeevan.
54. The Call.

VIII. Reaching My Limits.

55. August Drama.
56. Doubting Thomas.
57. The Gates Open.
58. The Limits of Power.
59. Full Moon, New Moon.
60. The Year Ends.
61. 7,063.

IX. Cracks in the Armor.

62. The Saint.
63. Birthday Blessing.
64. Premik.
65. Fight on the Block.
66. Peace Run '87.
67. Weight and Lifting.
68. Polishing the Rough Diamond.

X. Beginning of the End.

69. The Flame is Gone.
70. Sundar.
71. Lonely Winter.
72. Breaking Down.
73. Lexicon.
74. New Ventures.
75. The Nurse.

XI. Running Away.

76. A New Goal Forms.
77. The Note.
78. Five-Year Reunion.
79. Planning (Part Deux).
80. Audition.
81. Freedom.
82. Called Back.
83. The Sit Down.

XII. The Old College Try.

84. Sudhir.
85. Shambhu's Offer.
86. Runnin' on Empty.
87. Bansidhar.
88. The Run Concludes.
89. Happy Birthday Mom!
90. Sport's Day '89.
91. Gaining Perspective.

XIII. Last Days.

92. Settling Back In.
93. La Petit Mort.
94. The Palladium, The Prostitute & The Palanquin.
95. Preparing to Leave for Good.
96. The Last Supper.
97. Bhima & Tejiyan.
98. Interlude.

XIV. Starting Over.

99. Starting Over.
100. Meeting My Better Half.
101. Sumati.
102. A Visit to New York.
103. A Plan Develops.
104. Delayed Entry Program.
105. Berkeley.
106. Remembrance.

XV. Joining the Navy.

107. In the Navy.
108. Navy Intelligence.
109. The Games Begin.
110. Class 187.
111. Quitter.
112. Life Begins Anew.
113. Looking Back.
114. My New Home.
115. Navy Chow.
116. Mail Call.
117. Alone at Sea.
118. Call from the Big House.
119. Home from Sea.
120. The End in Sight.
121. One Year!

XVI. Getting Schooled.

122. Freedom!
123. Into Balance.
124. Re-Awakening.
125. Growing Family.
126. My Guru and His Disciple.
127. Lines of Communication.

XVII. The Last Test.

128. Confidence-Light.
129. One L.
130. The Blue Lotus.
131. The Board.
132. In Memory: Sudhir.
133. The Truth.
134. Night Terrors.
135. Bryon Granmo.
136. Savitri.
137. Last Words.
138. Sudhir's Call.
139. Conclusion.

XVIII. Epilogue.

140. My Hopes for the Center.

BOOK TWO

I. Taking Another Look.

141. More to Discuss.
142. The Golden Boy.
143. Zero Sum Game.
144. Cartwheels in a Sari (Part One).
145. Cartwheels in a Sari (Part Two).
146. Cartwheels in a Sari (Part Three).
147. Ashrita.
148. Ranjana.
149. Gaining Influence.
150. Akuli.
151. Objectivity.
152. Databir.

II. A Seeming Paradox.

153. Things Have Changed.
154. Paradox.
155. The Ethical Case.
156. Metaphysical Assumptions.
157. Sanyassa & Tyaga.
158. The Tantra.
159. Circling Back.
160. Realization.
161. Neuroanatomy & Yoga.
162. Crying Wolf?
163. Soliciting Topics.
164. Unconditional Acceptance.

III. New Revelations.

165. Organizational Cancer.
166. Beauty -- A Guest Post by Sundari.
167. Bihagee - A Guest Post.
168. Outing.
169. Comments.
170. A Quick Link.
171. Outing, Part Deux.
172. Hear Me Roar.
173. Karen Armstrong on Compassion.
174. "Even enemies can show respect."

IV. Grateful Nevertheless.

175. Organizational Chemo.
176. An Instructive Example.
177. Living Without Magic.
178. The Anvil.

The Anvil

2009-11-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

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 part. But to say that I could have achieved the breakthroughs in my meditations that I had all by myself would be inaccurate. I can only speak for myself in this regard, but when I meditated in front of Guru, he brought something powerful to the table.

A few months back, a friend of mine challenged me on this point. I told him that if I had been meditating on a rock -- rather than in front of Guru -- I would not have had the same profound (profound to me anyway) experiences I had had meditating with Guru.

"Have you ever tried meditating on a rock?" my friend asked. "Maybe you would have."

It's a fair point, I suppose. Maybe if I had devoted hours of concentrated effort meditating on a rock I would have had the same experiences. I doubt it, but perhaps. Even so, I'm still grateful to Guru.

And there are some very tangible reasons for me to be grateful.

Were it not for Guru, I would never have met any of these people: Sahishnu, Prakash, Sevika, Giribar, Ketan, Phanindra, Bipin, Pulin, Jigisha, Anugata, Ranjana, Lavanya, Jayanti, Premik, Shambhu, Sundar, Sunil, Shraddha, or Dhruva, Trishatur, Bansidhar, the Rocherolles (Gangadhar, Gayatri, Narendra, and Durdam), Bhima and Tejiyan, Sudhir, Pinak, Ashrita, Databir, Suchatula, Sundari, or Bihagee.

And that's just a short list.

Meeting these people alone was worth the price of admission, even if that price meant that Guru deceived me. It was, without a doubt, worth it to me.

Finally, even if Guru brought nothing to our relationship -- even if he was simply the anvil upon which I hammered my own identity -- then I am grateful for that anvil.

I'll always be so.

The photo above shows Hephaestus, Greek god of blacksmiths among other things.

Living Without Magic

2009-11-29T13:54:00.000-08:00

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 coffee I'm addicted to (not all the time anyway). Nor am I arguing that we need to forsake the mystical and vastly unexplored world of our subjective consciousness.

But it's imperative at some point not to cede control of one's life over to the imaginary.

At some point, the individual must stand up on his or her own. At some point, one must stop relying -- stop hoping really -- for magical help from the beyond and instead take control of one's own life. This is especially true after one's spiritual master has died.

(Unlike some, I still believe in the utility of the guruvada -- the taking up of a guru on the path of yoga. Why a person would ever surrender their decision making ability to a brother or sister disciple after the master's passing, however, is beyond me.)

I found a nice little example of this point in an anecdote recalled by Mahendranath Gupta.

Mahendranath was known by many names, but I suppose most folks know him by the titles Paramahansa Yogananda gave him in Autobiography of a Yogi: "Master Mahasaya" or the "Blissful Devotee."

When I had read Autobiography as a kid, I'd assumed the title "master" meant just that: spiritual master -- a title denoting inner achievement or self-mastery. And, in part, that may have been how Swami Yogananda meant it in the book.

As I learned later, though, Sri M (as he's known within Ramakrishna circles) had been called "master" for most of his adult life.

In fact, Sri Ramakrishna himself referred to his intimate disciple as "master."

That's because Sri M worked as a schoolmaster by profession. He was about 27 when he first met Thakur and had graduated college with distinction. He had a small family to look after and was living at home with his parents and other relatives. His living situation was extremely stressful.

It was so stressful, in fact, that it was driving M crazy -- literally.

One rainy night -- on the verge of committing suicide -- M rushed out of his family home intent on not returning. His devoted wife insisted upon following him. After a few miles in the rain, the horse drawn carriage they were riding in broke down in the mud. More disconsolate that ever, M eventually sought shelter in the middle of the night from a relative.

The next day -- while strolling through the gardens of Dakshineswar -- M's cousin asked him if he'd like to visit a sadhu. That sadhu, of course, was Sri Ramakrishna.

The course of M's life was permanently altered.

For the next four years, M would visit Thakur just about every weekend (and at any other opportunity he could find). Then, after returning home for the night, M would stay up late writing down the events that had transpired that day with Thakur from memory. For the remainder of the week -- until his next visit to Dakshineswar -- M would go over and over the events of the previous weekend, drawing out the details of every conversation, every utterance.

That was M's sadhana for about four years, which resulted in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna or as originally known the "Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita."

Then, in 1886, Sri Ramakrishna died.

M was devastated by the death of his master and friend. He found it difficult to write or even talk about the events surrounding Thakur's passing. In his grief, M looked for a sign of his master's unseen hand in his life. Then, one day, while waiting for a trolley to take him to work, M found his sign.

He tells the story this way:

Thakur had just given up the body.

I was then a teacher in the Oriental Seminary. I was headmaster of three schools at a time. I had to teach for an hour in each school. I had to go there by palanquin, at times also by tram.

Once, I was changing trams at the Burrabazar when I saw a sadhu there. His face was similar to Thakur's. He had his seat there. He was like a child.

I would go and stand beside him daily. When the sun was bright, I used to hold an umbrella over him. Seeing him, Thakur would fill my mind.

Once, he favored me by asking if I could help him take a train to Howrah. I said "yes." Thereafter I bought his ticket and helped him entrain to Howrah.

He then kindly gave me a small piece of paper saying, "Put it in a case and keep it with you as an amulet. You will never be in want -- your travails will end."

After the train left, I walked on happily carrying it with me until I reached the Pontoon Bridge of Howrah. As soon as I cast a glance towards Dakshineswar, I was reminded of Thakur's words and felt downcast with shame.

I touched the paper with my forehead and threw it into the Ganga.

I felt ashamed of myself. I realized that Thakur was always looking after me. For he had said, "What is there for you to worry about? You already have the privilege of having a guru." The moment I remembered these great words of his, I was overwhelmed with shame.

Then I returned home reassured, full of bliss.

(M., The Apostle and the Evangelist, Vol. 8, pp. 217-218.)

Sri M is a good example for anyone treading the path of yoga. After the passing of his guru, he didn't forsake his master or forget about him. On the contrary, he spent the rest of his life -- which lasted until 1932 -- reflecting on those four years in the early 1880s.

He focused upon publishing his diaries -- the Gospel -- and encouraging all those he came in contact with, including the young Mukunda Lal Ghosh, to tread the path of yoga.

Sri M, however, did not engage in any further magical thinking.

The message is clear. For those of us who haven't already done so, let's give up the magical thinking that helped us through our spiritual undergraduate program in the Center. Let us release our dreams of rainbows and unicorns (and our nightmares of darkness and hostile forces).

Instead, let's stand up on our own two feet and find the spiritual life right here on Earth. Let's find the spiritual in the human gesture, not the mysterious divine symbol.

Ultimately, the path of yoga is about the individual. It's about becoming the supreme individual. To do that, one must give up all reliance on forces and guides outside oneself.

Until you're ready, willing, and able to shoulder the burden of your own life, you'll never truly be of use to anyone else.

At top, that's Sri M some years after his master's death. Just above is the more classic shot of him in old age, sitting near the Panchavati at Dakshineswar. Here's a nice site devoted to Sri M's home, with some interesting photos.

An Instructive Example

2009-11-26T12:38:00.000-08:00

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 culture of secrecy, the active cover-up by leadership, and the fact that a brave few were willing to speak up.

The takeaway point is that here's an example of how a religious organization -- however late -- turned its attention to its own behavior.

Painful as it is -- embarrassing as it is -- an open and honest inquiry conducted by uninterested, neutral investigators is the the only option for an organization facing this kind of rot from inside if it wants to have any sense of relevance to the outside world.

Credit for the image of the Clarsach or Irish Harp goes here.

Organizational Chemo

2009-11-25T08:10:00.000-08:00

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 trial -- scribbling notes to the lawyer, dictating trial tactics.

During the Alipore bomb case trial, Sri Aurobindo had trouble fighting the urge to feed notes to C.R. Das and to suggest strategy. Then he received a "command from within" telling him to, in essence, let his lawyer do his job.

In the end, 17 of 36 defendants were acquitted, including Sri Aurobindo. (Sri Aurobindo's younger brother, Barindra, was one of two found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Their sentences were later commuted to life, and in 1920 they both received amnesty.)

C.R. Das went on to become a leading figure in the independence movement of India. But before we leave his story, let me suggest that C.R. Das was the best kind of lawyer. He wasn't a tool for his client's whim.

He didn't restrict his advice to good news. He wasn't a yes man.

I think it's safe to say that C.R. Das told his clients what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. That's what a good lawyer does.

The client never likes to hear bad news, but it's often the only medicine that will help.

So it is with the Center.

The Center as an organization faces a threat to its existence that is not of its making. It is suffering from a late stage organizational cancer that can only be cured by radical action -- action that I fear the Center's leadership would rather not hear about, much less consider.

The outlines of this action have already been put forth in this excellent comment by reader "Legal Eagle." I don't know who "Legal Eagle" is, but at the heart of his or her advice is this: the need for an independent investigation.

Like it or not, that's the only course of action that can save the Center as an organization.

To be precise, it's the only voluntary action the leadership of the Center can take. There are, of course, involuntary possibilities.

It is, I suspect, only a matter of time before a major media outlet takes an interest in this story. Imagine, for example, if any of these individuals take an interest in the sordid events that have been revealed over the last few weeks. Although indirect, the ensuing publicity nightmare would force unpredictable changes upon the Center.

Likewise -- though I have no knowledge of any concrete plans by anyone in this regard -- I'd assess the likelihood of legal action over the near to mid-term as high. What a misfortune that would be for all involved. In this regard, let me make one thing clear to my friends in the Center.

Though I've been asked, I've advised nobody about litigation against the Center. Nor shall I do so. Though it's my profession, litigation is -- by its very nature -- a destructive path. It should be avoided at all costs.

I won't be a part of such an action.

I don't think I'm giving away any secret, however, when I say that despite its destructive nature, litigation is good at solving some types of problems, one of which is a corporate board of directors that doesn't follow formalities, that doesn't investigate reported wrongdoing, and that revokes the membership rights of its members without due process.

Nevertheless, the leadership of the Center should take heed. Voluntary reform is cheaper, it provides certainty, and it affords some measure of control. These are things that I expect the Center's corporate counsel already knows. In this case, corporate counsel's challenge is to convince the rest of the Center's board members of this.

Like all corporate counsel, however, it should never be forgotten that the duty of an organization's lawyer is always to the organization. Where the organization's interests diverge from the interests of the corporate counsel's fellow board members, the lawyer's duty is to the organization.

In this case, the Center is sick and only a neutral, independent quest for the truth will save it.

"Even enemies can show respect."

2009-11-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

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'Toole), sneaks into the Greek camp and begs Achilles to return Hector's body.

Watch the clip on YouTube here.

Karen Armstrong on Compassion

2009-11-22T10:39:00.000-08:00

Hear Me Roar

2009-11-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

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 photo above.

Outing, Part Deux

2009-11-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

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 in the Center while privately grappling with the pain of their own abuse.

It's quite another for any of these victims of Guru's sexual abuse to actively work in concert with the Center to tear down the reputations of the courageous women who have thus far spoken out or to actively deceive current disciples about what they themselves know to be true.

Though I hope it never comes to that, such women should be outed.

What I'd really like to see -- and what I've blogged about before -- is someone, anyone, to stand up for the truth, to stand up for what's right, even if it means paying a personal price for doing so. That's what I'd like to see.

It's really the flip side to the much more common phenomena of going along with the crowd, of not rocking the boat, of standing by while others get hurt.

A lot of research has gone into what makes people compliant to authority, even when that authority asks the individual to do something wrong, even when the order requires the individual to hurt someone else. Preeminent among such research is the work done by Professor Philip G. Zimbardo.

Professor Zimbardo is famous for the 1971 Stanford prison experiment. In that study, Prof. Zimbardo demonstrated how ordinary people can be corrupted by the roles they play and the environment in which they work. He's written a relatively new book called The Lucifer Effect on the subject, but it's the flip side of this research that I'm more interested in here.

The antidote for this evil of our general willingness to go along with whatever is dictated to us from the authority figure even at the expense of fellow human beings is what Prof. Zimbardo calls the "heroic imagination."

The idea seems to be that if one's own personal psychological narrative is that "I'm a hero in waiting" -- waiting for an opportunity to stand up to the "man" even at personal cost to oneself -- then the chance that you'll cave under pressure from authority or peer pressure is minimized.

Honestly, I'll be doing you a great disservice to write any more about this.

Take 25 minutes and watch Prof. Zimbardo's talk to the audience at TED. (And if you haven't yet discovered TED, take some time there and explore some of the wonderful talks available there.)

It is particularly relevant to our experiences in the Center and the current situation facing all of us.

A Quick Link

2009-11-17T11:10:00.000-08:00

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.

Comments

2009-11-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

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 an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

That's where we find ourselves now.

Together, we've developed a forum of concerned readers and thus an audience for trolls and others unconcerned with our purposes here: dialogue and a search for the truth. Once trolls appear, moderating comments becomes more challenging.

My default position is to let everyone speak. Let's have a true marketplace of ideas, where the good ideas compete with the bad ideas, winner take all. This default position presupposes, of course, that the participants are actually sharing ideas (which trolls, by definition, do not).

So, it pained me to reject my first comment over the weekend. For those betting in the informal pool about who would be censored first -- I had put my money on my acid tongued sister -- there were no winners. Instead, the distinction went to one "Michael Howard," who offered a particularly nasty message that he said he'd received from Guru. (Note to Michael: thanks for the message, we no longer require your services.)

Since then, I've started getting more comfortable with the "reject" button. So, beware friend and foe alike: if I don't like your comment, I ain't posting it.

With that in mind, here are some guidelines and tips for commenting:

1. Click on the title of the blog post. When you click on the title of the blog post, the page will reload and all the associated comments will appear in an easy to read fashion at the end of the post.

2. When you submit a comment, give me some time. The site forwards your comment to my email account. My choices are then limited: I can either publish your comment or I can reject it.

3. I cannot edit your comment. I would never do so anyway, but early on I wanted to correct some obvious spelling errors in a comment and learned that I couldn't do so; Blogger will not allow it. So, proofread before sending!

4. Remember the "Coffee Shop Rule." This is my virtual coffee shop. I love it here. It's my baby and I'm very jealous of it. If you wouldn't say something to someone's face over coffee, then don't post it to my blog. (There is a true forum for unmoderated ideas at the Yahoo! Sri Chinmoy Information site, which can be found here. Beware the hot coffee there!)

5. Use emoticons. If you're being snarky or using irony, give some indication of it. Remember, blog commenting is the lowest form of human communication because such comments are so easily misunderstood. They permit none of the visual cues that we normally rely upon so heavily in face to face discussions.

6. We don't have to agree! But consider which of the following comments is most likely to be posted.

Exhibit A:

I don't believe the allegations leveled at Guru because you're an asshole Yogaloy.

Exhibit B:

I don't believe the allegations leveled at Guru because I was in the Center for 30 years, went to the House every night, and I never saw anything to indicate Guru was having sex with his disciples.
Now, while it's certainly true that I'm an asshole (I think I could find a friend who might agree -- you know who you are), that's not really a reason for disbelieving the allegations.

Though I'd disagree with the latter argument, it's a good faith and respectable argument.

7. Don't impugn others' motives. I make this mistake myself sometimes, but let's all work to avoid doing so. If someone says something that you don't agree with, don't assume they're liars, dupes, or anything other than someone wrestling with some very difficult information that may be central to their identity.

8. Email me. For any reason, but especially if you've posted a comment and it doesn't show up. When you comment, I don't get your email address. So, I might have a good reason for holding your comment, but I won't be able to share it with you if you don't ask. Also, I may not have received your comment. I've noticed problems with the Blogger comment function and have lost some of my own, so communicate.

And finally...

9. Please don't criticize anyone by name, other than yourself or Guru. That's been a working principle of mine, which I've been pretty good at following. I ask that you do the same. This isn't about Ashrita or Ranjana or any other current disciples. I'm not saying you shouldn't use their names to make relevant points or to offer constructive suggestions, but other than that and your risking comment rejection.

Lemon out.

The image above is The Siren by John William Waterhouse.

Outing

2009-11-15T14:08:00.000-08:00

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 sexual orientation to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Although he had been active within San Francisco's gay community, Oliver Sipple was not "out" to his parents. The resulting newspaper article and media frenzy changed that. Oliver Sipple had been "outed."

While Harvey Milk's decision to out Oliver Sipple may have made sense in the abstract strategic sense as a way to advance the gay rights movement, it exacted a heavy personal toll on Mr. Sipple. He was estranged from his parents for years afterward and was exposed to stress and pressures that without doubt contributed to his early death at age 47.

As we -- the current and former disciples of Sri Chinmoy -- consider how to move forward in the coming weeks, months, and years, I hope we remember the story of Oliver Sipple. Ultimately, I'm not concerned with the Center as an organization.

I'm concerned with individuals.

I now know the names of more than a half dozen female disciples -- some of who move within the leadership of the Sri Chinmoy Center -- who were active participants in Guru's sex ring.

I have no intention of outing these women.

They've done nothing wrong. These women are victims, just like our other spiritual sisters Phulela, Sevika, Rupavati, Suchatula, Sundari, and Bihagee. They may not think of themselves as victims and may not want or need our help. But we should, nevertheless, stand ready to offer our collective hand of support should they ever ask.

We can't make such an offer in good faith, however, if in our zeal to make some larger point trample upon the very women we claim to support.

It's imperative that we create a safe and supportive environment. If we violate their privacy now -- if we out them preemptively -- we'll be creating anything but a safe and supportive environment for them. From our cloistered sisters' point of view, we'll be living up to the negative stereotype Guru long ago painted of former disciples as "hostile forces."

It's been tempting for me over the last few weeks to think that I know better.

Sitting on explosive information like the stories of Sundari and Bihagee -- revelation of which I thought would benefit the truth in the abstract and help others who are privately suffering similar pains -- was difficult and try as I might, I overstepped my bounds with Sundari and Bihagee a little, adding stress to their lives at a time when they least needed it.

All has worked out now, with their brave public disclosures, but the process has given me pause.

Let's remember, together, that the path of self-development is ultimately an individual one. We can't force our sister disciples to do more than they themselves are willing to do.

If this blog is going to morph into something other than my own memoir -- as it has apparently already -- then it must be about facilitating the further development of each one of us through dialog, understanding and sympathy.

It will do no good to expose the truth for truth's sake if in the process we destroy the well being of those we claim to support.

In this regard, let's remember Oliver Sipple and always strive to temper our zeal for the truth with sympathy for our brothers and sisters still in the Center, many of who are struggling with these issues for the very first time.

Let's not trample upon their opportunity to stand up for themselves in the name of some abstract principle.

Bihagee - A Guest Post

2009-11-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

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 doubting my spiritual master. I was punishing myself for not having enough surrender. No matter which way I looked at it, I was always somehow a culprit.

In spite of all that, when I weighed the beautiful moments and experiences I had on the path, all that my spiritual life had given me, all of my sweet spiritual family members, against the pain I was feeling, the balance still tipped in favor of my disciple life.

I couldn’t share my secret turmoil with my parents, who were on the path. I couldn’t tell my few best friends, and to be honest, I did not want to. How could I share something like this? How could I possibly betray my Guru, my spiritual master?

Would my friends believe me?

Maybe I was the only one.

I wanted to walk into the sea and just have it over with. In the end, I decided I would have to quietly accept what Guru had asked me to do and somehow continue with my spiritual life, the life that had shaped me into a much better person, the life that had helped me find out so much about myself.

Oh, but it was not so easy.

Believe me, I did my best. I tried so hard that almost nobody thought I was troubled. But it was difficult. There I was, spending my time with my friends, working, going to the center, doing all a good disciple is expected to do and at the same time feeling bad for not doing it 100% the way I had done done it before 2007.

I was having a hard time and blaming myself for having a hard time. The guilt and secrecy really pained me. I was hoping for an answer from Guru, who then suddenly passed away. That did not help things.

Then one of my brother disciples in San Francisco, Viddyut, told me about Suchatula’s story. As a good disciple, I had never read Suchatula’s story, despite the fact that we had been such good friends before she had left the path.

My world completely felt apart.

Guru had asked me to do the same thing. If in any way I had been defending what had happened to me, now that I realized that others were also involved, I simply couldn’t handle it anymore.

All my fears were confirmed.

It was so painful, standing in front of Ananda Fuara, trying to assimilate it all, while Viddyut patiently tried to help me recover from the shock. At the same time, I will admit it, I felt relieved that all was out in the open. I can finally share, talk about it and receive understanding, belief, and care.

A load was off my heart.

Oh, only if all was so easy. The realization of it all was excruciating. My head would not stop aching, thoughts too big and heavy for my little brain to handle were pushing their way in. I felt as if someone heavy was sitting on my chest and would not move.

I couldn’t breathe, I had no desire to eat or sleep.

The only person I told was Donka, one of my best friends. Even then it took a while for me to start explaining what had happened to me. So judge me if you want, but I had to tell someone, and better someone that was far from San Francisco.

Next, I was finally able to call my other best friend, Suchatula, with whom I had not spoken to since she herself had left the center. We talked for hours and hours. If only one of us had shared with each other earlier…

She came and picked me up. After a day together, she drove me to the airport.

If only this was the end. It was not easy for me to be in the center struggling with this secret, but it sure is not easier now either.

I had to call to my parents, knowing that they would not only suffer as disciples, but would naturally blame themselves for not protecting their child (as any good parents would). They are not to blame though. I have always made decisions for myself.

I am now dead to my many friends in the center.

They have not called me or contacted me in any way. I am suspected of being hostile and mentally ill. But believe me, I do not blame them, because I know how the center works. I know how they have to protect themselves, even if it means considering me dead, so that they can protect the precious, beautiful life we all had.

My world has been shattered. Now, I have no desire of joining any other spiritual group. Everything I gave heart and soul for has been stained. But again, I do not regret my years as a disciple. If I had the chance to go back 10 years and make the choice over, I would take the same road.

I only wish to share that it has not been easy, and it certainly is not easier now.

Just telling this story to one person has been such a painful experience. I do not have the strength to tell other disciples, as I have been blamed of doing. I did not call New York and never tried to convince people to leave the center. I simply could not do that.

I have decided, though, that I cannot and should not continue blaming myself anymore.

Thank you all for your support and love. I know that things will get better. Let everyone decide what’s best for themselves.

Just do not accuse us of writing lies.

I so wish all of this was a lie.

Beauty -- A Guest Post by Sundari

2009-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

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 up. I did it too and it broke my heart every time.

So now…

On the day before my birthday this year I received an unexpected gift from Ashrita – my complete and total freedom. After 37 years, I was told to leave the centre.

The day began like any other day. As I had done each Friday morning, I got up at 5 am, put on a sari and headed to work at Ananda Fuara to do my job baking and then later waitressing. I had no idea what would be in store for me when I got to work.

A long-time co-worker and friend put on a hysterical display that caused shock and fear in the other two workers who were with me that morning. She ended her tirade by marching to the door, flinging it open and saying, “Suchatula made allegations and she left, Bihagee made allegations and she left. What are you still doing here? We don’t need your stupid cakes and we don’t need YOU!!!”

Just to set the record straight, Suchatula never made any allegations or even looked at the internet sites about Guru until many months after she left. And on that Friday morning, Bihagee was planning to go visit a dear friend in Seattle. She herself didn’t find out that she had left the path until she was informed by her parents that Ashrita had called Bulgaria and told her centre that she had become a hostile force.

Now about me…

First of all, let me say, I was not thrown out by Guru. I served him sincerely every day of my disciple life and would have continued probably to the end of my days. I truly believed as I sadly went home that morning that my brothers and sisters would see some sort of light, come to their senses and realize there had been a horrible mistake.

I begged Yogaloy to give them some time, let the dust settle and please not mention my name in his blog. But I was sadly disappointed. It seems Ashrita called a few members of the Committee and my fate was decided.

I won’t go into details, but my story, Guru’s reasons and even my reactions were very similar to Sevika’s. I had a sexual relationship with Guru.

People ask, “Well, why didn’t you leave?” I say it wasn’t that simple. First of all, I loved Guru, adored him. He was the Supreme, God on earth, my Father, my Mother, my All.

How could he ever be wrong about anything and who was I to question him?

He offered to help me purify my vital life and I would be foolish not to accept. I just never expected that this purification would take over two decades.

Like Sevika, I thought I was maybe the only one, or one of very few women involved in this activity. I eventually felt I was performing a service, maybe even helping Guru in some way to remain on earth. It seemed like a worthy sacrifice.

I was told from the start I must never tell a soul or even write anything down and that if I told, nobody would believe me and they would think I was crazy. That should have made me nervous and it did. But by that time I had completely severed all connections with my family (at Guru’s command) and had no friends or support outside the centre.

If I had left I would have had to move out of my home as well. I guess I just wasn’t brave enough or self-confident enough to make that decision.

About my family: in the early 70’s my sister, my mother and I were all disciples. After five years my sister left, followed a year later by my mother. At that time I was told to send my family a telegram asking them never to call or write to me again.

I was told that my mother’s leaving was a crime against her soul and that if I were to talk to them they would not realize the seriousness of their error and later in life they could go deaf or blind. To protect my parents from that fate I didn’t communicate with them for the next 20 years even though we had been a very close family.

I later learned that my mother had cried every day and said she almost wished I had died because at least that way they could have had a funeral and some closure.

Isn’t it interesting to know that these people, my family, actually loved me and prayed for my happiness every day of those 20 years, while respecting my wishes and never once contacting me?

They embody the true essence of spirituality.

Whereas my long-time co-worker and friend at the restaurant, who has worked beside me for decades, sung thousands of songs with me, and shared my whole disciple life, could in one day become so unimaginably hostile.

It all boils down to defending the lie that is at the very heart of what remains of the centre without Guru. It’s the reason that my friend and those in her boat have embodied the very worst qualities of the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trials. Did not our beloved Thomas Jefferson wage a campaign for religious freedom? How then does she have the right to try to corner each worker and ask them, “So are you with us or against us? Are you on the side of light or on the side of darkness?”

I would like to ask my former brothers and sisters, who are so hasty to believe I am evil and a hostile force: please just use your heart and even your brain for a minute and tell me, what could I possibly gain by making up a lie about this after spending the last 37 years (all of my adult life) serving Guru?

I have transcribed and prepared for publication thousands and thousands of songs. I have spent countless hours creating and repairing an extensive database of those songs. Guru often said, “No Sundari, no Sri Chinmoy’s music.”

This has been my entire life’s work. Why would I throw it all away?

I have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose. I have lost my job, my former friends, my good name, my spiritual family. I have gained nothing except my freedom to finally speak the truth.

Even that would never have happened since I took my promise quite seriously, keeping a secret for 23 years that caused me tremendous inner conflict. But it was a sacrifice I was willing to make to protect my Guru and my brothers and sisters.

The turning point finally came when a co-worker mentioned to me that he had read Suchatula’s story on Yogaloy’s blog (which of course I had never even heard of before, being an obedient disciple who doesn’t read things on the internet about Guru). Having lived with Suchatula for years and having watched her leave with absolutely no idea why, I was curious enough to look for her account and it didn’t take long to find it.

At this point I must say that my sexual relations with Guru had ended a few years before, back during the time when so much information first appeared on the internet. I truly believed that he had seen the danger of this activity and ceased altogether. But reading Suchatula’s story made me realize that it had not only continued, but had changed into something far stranger than anything I had known.

My experiences with Guru had been entirely private and just between the two of us, while Suchatula’s involved another woman. The strangeness of that and the devastating effect it had on such an exemplary disciple upset me deeply.

It’s one thing to make a personal sacrifice and surrender, but to see your sister’s spiritual life completely destroyed is another thing altogether.

When asked by Viddyut if I believed her story, I said yes I did. It just had the ring of truth. And then, when he found out from Bihagee that she had suffered the same fate while in Bulgaria 3 years ago, it was all just too painful to bear.

So this is my crime.

I sympathizing with two women whose spiritual lives will never be the same. I don’t pretend to be all-knowing and of course we can never judge the actions of an Avatar. It is said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Guru’s Life-Tree produced many wonderful fruits.

It also produced a few not-so-wonderful ones. I guess it is up to us to make our own decisions about our lives based on what feels right in our hearts and our souls. That’s the understanding I’ve come to anyway.

It’s a whole new world.

May the disciples who are left to carry on Guru’s message somehow find the strength and the wisdom to listen to their hearts, overcome their fears and realize that Guru does not need us to defend him.

He needs us to embody true spirituality as a testament to the Light he gave us. One way leads to a slow and painful death, the other to life.

We must choose.

With love,
Sundari

Organizational Cancer

2009-11-06T23:50:00.000-08:00

"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 was confirmed with the coming out of Suchatula. Sevika's, Rupavati's, and Phulela's stories weren't evidence of just some isolated, benign ailment.

Instead, their stories were symptomatic of a malignant disease that Guru sowed within his organization, which now reaches all the way into the very leadership circle of the Center. It will be with little wonder that we look back at this time, years from now, and realize that this was when the patient put the first step in the grave.

Not surprisingly, I guess, it started in San Francisco.

That's where Suchatula spent more than 20 years as a disciple working at the disciple-owned vegetarian restaurant Ananda Fuara, alongside some of the very old-guard disciples, like Nirvik, Sundari, Venu, and Dharana, who once watched over me as a youngster in the Center.

The San Francisco disciples knew Suchatula. They couldn't easily dismiss her. Now, as it turns out, at least two other San Francisco disciples have reported similar stories (one admitting to sex with Guru, the other to being pressured into sex with another female disciple).

Their reward for making the ultimate surrender to Guru?

It appears these two women are gone from the Center (one apparently kicked out, the other fleeing the inevitable). The disgraceful treatment meted out to them was also visited on a prominent younger San Francisco male disciple named Viddyut.

"If you're not 100% for Guru," they were told, "then you're out!"

The chutzpah! These women -- and the dozens like them -- were the only disciples "100% for Guru!" They gave body, mind, and soul to him.

And Viddyut's crime? He believed his sister-disciple's stories -- because they're true -- and he showed these women support.

This is the beginning of the end for the Center as even an arguably legitimate enterprise. If an organization founded upon the principles of yoga isn't about seeking the truth no matter where it lies, then it might as well be burned to the ground.

The sheer incompetence of the Center's board of directors evidenced by this morning's events is nothing short of stunning.

Is there not one fucking person in the whole of this cancer-ridden organization that can make a stand against his or her own goddamned personal interest?

Not one?

As our fictional hero Lt. Col. Frank Slade might say in the video above, the "leaders" of the Center are "killing the very spirit this institution proclaims to instill." Does nobody in the organization care enough to speak out?

It's ironic, I suppose, that the leader of the San Francisco Center -- Garima -- is a doctor and might know a thing or two about the importance of attacking malignancy.

I hope she'll set an example for others to follow.

I don't remember first meeting Garima, but it must have been during those early heady days when I would sneak out of my dad's house as a 16 year old to go to meditations up at the old San Francisco Center on 16th Avenue and Taraval Street in the Sunset District.

Back then, Sevika was the Center leader there and Garima kept a very low profile. By the time I had ensconced myself as a local disciple in New York, Sevika was on her way out. It was Garima, then, who took over the duties of Center leader.

It was sometime later that my only real memory of Garima was established.

Very late one night -- actually, it was probably very early one morning -- after a long drive back from a concert in New Jersey, Vinaya and I arrived at Guru's house to find the place dark.

Typically, when concerts were held in Manhattan, for example, Vinaya and I could pack up Guru's musical instruments afterward and drive back to Queens in time to put all the instruments away and then hang out at Guru's house with the other regulars and relax. Then, sometime around midnight, Guru would tell everyone to go home for the night.

On this particular night, though, we got back very late because of the long, out-of-state drive. The house was dark. But that wasn't really a problem for us. We had keys and the combination to the cypher-locked doors.

That night, Vinaya said that he'd unload most of the instruments into Guru's garage, which was then used for storage, while I should take Guru's favorite instruments -- the flute, cello, harmonium, and esraj -- into the house and put them in their usual spots in the living room.

So, I unlocked the door, carefully picked up the esraj and its bow, and walked into the house through the side door. I went up a short flight of stairs, turned right, and made my way into the darkened -- but not completely dark -- living room. To my surprise, Guru was sitting in his usual oversized recliner.

Garima was sitting on the floor in front of him massaging his feet.

Now, back in the day, I kept pretty close attention to who was permitted to touch Guru. There were just a handful of disciples given that honor.

None of them were girls.

I was surprised to see Garima at Guru's feet. She looked a little surprised to see me, too. But she quickly focused back on Guru and Guru didn't seem worried by my presence as I walked in and out a few more times bringing in the rest of the instruments. When Vinaya and I were done, he and I went home.

As I walked home that early morning, I reflected on what I'd seen and actually thought it was pretty cool that Garima was allowed to massage Guru. I figured that as a doctor, she must have had the ability to think about the body in a very clinical -- and unsexual -- way.

I had -- and have -- no problem with what I saw that night. I don't think it was sexual. In hindsight, though, it has helped me understand how Guru hid things from even those disciples who seemingly spent every waking hour with him.

Whether she likes it or not, it is perhaps fitting that Garima is the Center's last hope. She's a doctor, after all, and is strong enough, smart enough, and has the personal integrity not to buckle under the extreme pressure she must be under. That's my hope anyway.

She knows the truth.

Without courage, however, without the willingness to lose everything you once held dear, the truth means nothing.

Seriously, if you haven't watched the video above, take at least 5 or 6 minutes and watch the main speech. Here's a quick plot summary if you haven't seen the movie before.

Made some significant edits from the original. First, and foremost, I got a little too far in front of the story for those involved and included a little too much personal detail. For that I'm sorry, and I've removed it. Second, the original post incorrectly stated that both these women had sex with Guru, when apparently just one did (the other was pressured by Guru to have sex with another female disciple). Finally, the original post stated both girls were kicked out of the Center. Apparently, one fled the Center preemptively, while the other may want to remain. I'm sorry for the errors. (November 7, 2009.)

Unconditional Acceptance

2009-11-02T20:05:00.000-08:00

"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's definitely something to be said for sticking to one's guns and this story reminds me of the literally mindless devotion we all sometimes have towards a principle, even when such rigidity begins to eviscerate the very principle we claim to be following.

In our case, the principle is truth seeking.

When it comes down to it, the essence of the guruvada -- the way of the guru -- is complete and utter surrender to one's guru without conditions. This is a lesson my friend's mom, hypothetically anyway, hadn't learned yet. As surrendered to Jesus as she may have been in other areas of her life, that surrender stopped when it came to whom her daughter dated.

From a yogic point of view, that's no surrender at all.

Take a moment and read the little aphorism above that Thakur was so fond of repeating to his disciples more than a hundred years ago. Think about what that means. That's unconditional acceptance, unconditional love for one's guru, no matter how he or she behaves.

It doesn't mean you, the disciple, must condone the guru's behavior. It doesn't mean you must play along, it just means you love your guru despite his or her apparent flaws. Perhaps it means loving from afar, the way one does for a wayward family member or an adult child who has gone astray.

You love and support, though perhaps not enable.

Whether accepted or not, the implication of this point of view is easily understood to those of us who believe the various allegations of wrongdoing that have been made against our own Guru. It suggests forgiveness -- that while we race to embrace and support our sister disciples who have been exploited by Guru, we should nevertheless remember what Guru once represented to us at a time in our lives when we needed something to believe in.

As I've struggled to explain in my last series of posts, my view -- which I acknowledge is one apparently not held by many others -- is that Guru was both extremely exalted (in his austere, reserved, passive consciousness) and emotionally immature (in his frenetic, vital, active consciousness).

When he meditated he went somewhere few others ever have. But when it came to expressing human feelings and emotions, Guru apparently never developed much beyond that young orphan brought up in a cold, repressive ashram. He took what he wanted -- what he needed -- from those surrendered to him.

Though my Guru deceived me and took sexual advantage of many of his spiritual daughters, "still to me he is the embodiment of eternal bliss."

I love him, flaws and all.

I challenge my friends -- most of whom (but not all) are inside the Center -- and who are not even willing to consider the mounting allegations of sexual misconduct to ask themselves whether their love for Guru is unconditional.

Because it seems to me that if you're too afraid to even consider these allegations it can only be because -- at root --your acceptance of Guru is conditional. You can only accept him as you think he is, but not necessarily as he actually was.

Not everyone in the Center has their head in the sand though. There are some who know the truth, and others unafraid to search for it.

The future of the Center rests with them.

"... at the length truth will out."

That's the goddess Kali above, from an etching done in 1770. Pretty cool. I found it here.

Soliciting Topics

2009-10-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

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 and my hopes for my sister disciples in the future.

I also probably won't be able to constrain myself from giving the Center, as an organization, some more unsolicited advice and ideas about how it might address the huge challenges it now faces. Organizations face these challenges -- i.e., allegations of wrongdoing -- all the time and there are ways to do it.

But it takes leadership. So, perhaps I can give those who have the Center's best interests at heart some ideas about how to step up.

I know there must be some other topics of interest to those of my loyal readers (you both know who you are!). So, please use the comment function below or email me privately and let me know what ideas you have and what topics you'd like me to write about.

Crying Wolf?

2009-10-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

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 evidence?

Since Sevika's story first broke, there have been a few schools of thought amongst my friends both inside and outside the Center. On one end of the spectrum, there are those (including some prominent former disciples) who reject the allegations of sexual misconduct outright. Impossible, they say.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who say Guru was a fraud. He had no redeeming qualities, they say, and any positive developments his disciples report were the result of either their own self-deception or their own self-disciplined life. In either event, Guru deserves no credit.

Then there are those scattered in the middle somewhere. Some folks sympathetic to Guru, for example, accept the truth of the allegations and shrug them off. Among this small group is one of my best friends, who said "they were all adults" -- no harm, no foul. Others, less sympathetic to Guru, acknowledge he had "powers" of some unspecified kind, but was a fraud nonetheless. A false or fallen master, they say.

I've got close friends in each of these groups, but none of these takes on Guru satisfies me.

Instead, I believe both -- that Guru had access to an exalted spiritual consciousness and engaged in sexual misconduct with his female disciples. And that's what I've been trying to explain over the last so many posts (starting here).

There is one aspect of this equation, however, that I haven't yet addressed in any depth-- the credibility of women who have made these troubling accusations against Guru. I began the discussion here, but as a recent commenter pointed out, I haven't really considered the possibility that Sevika, Rupavati, Phulela and Suchatula might all be lying about their experiences with Guru.

Do women make false allegations of sexual misconduct?

Yes. But not very often, and when they do there's usually a pretty clear motive for it. Our spiritual sisters in this case don't fit the mold.

First, let's talk numbers. The only reliable empirical data on false allegations comes from rape cases, which while not exactly on point here -- nobody has alleged Guru committed rape -- the data still gives us a baseline understanding. Though it makes for big headlines in the news (see the recent Hofstra University case or the infamous Duke University lacrosse case), women do not make false rape allegations very often.

The number is between 8-10%. (Here's a good article from Slate on the topic.) In other words, 90% of the time, women who report rape are telling the truth.

There are reasons the number of false rape allegations are relatively low, including criminal prohibitions against making false police reports, moral prohibitions against destroying an innocent person's life by making such a false allegation, and a general unwillingness by most people to endure the invasive scrutiny into one's private behavior that making such a charge entails. As a matter of fact, most rapes (as many as 60%) are never reported.

I can't think of any good reason why this same trend wouldn't apply to false public allegations of sexual misconduct. While there are no criminal prohibitions against such false claims, there are civil prohibitions. Sevika's allegations, for example, certainly tarnished Guru's reputation. If false, she risked exposure to a defamation lawsuit, which is the civil remedy you pursue to get your reputation back.

Yet, Guru never pursued such a suit. Now, as a trial lawyer, I can tell you that just because you can sue doesn't mean that you should. In these types of cases, for example, filing a lawsuit can exacerbate the very problem you're trying to avoid by bringing widespread attention to allegations that otherwise would get little attention on the Yahoo! message board.

In Guru's case, however, the claims made by Sevika and the others were already attracting press attention by the New York Post and other press outlets. There didn't seem to be much downside -- on the publicity front anyway -- to suing Sevika and the others for their false allegations. Unless, of course, the allegations were true.

Likewise, it seems the same moral prohibitions against making such false allegations in a rape case would also apply in this case. I can't imagine my spiritual sisters any more inclined to lie than the general public. Nor do I think they'd be any more willing to expose their lives to public scrutiny, knowing as I do firsthand the reticence with which one confronts the wider world upon leaving the Center.

On the sheer numbers alone, it seems unlikely that our sisters are making these stories up. Numbers aside, what would motivate these four women to make such allegations?

In all of the other circumstances that I can think of where people make false allegations of sexual misconduct, there's almost always a discernible ulterior motive. In rape cases -- like the Hofstra and Duke cases alluded to above -- the false allegation of rape is used to mask the putative victim's embarrassment at having had consensual sex (with either some undesirable person or with someone other than one's spouse).

In sexual harassment cases, false allegations may be made to gain a financial advantage in a civil suit. In family law cases, false allegations of child abuse are sometimes made by one parent trying to win sole custody of the children. In the political arena, false allegations may be made for both financial and partisan advantage.

I detect no such ulterior motives in any of the allegations made by Sevika, Rupavati, Phulela or Suchatula.

It has been suggested that perhaps they're simply disgruntled. That in order to mask their own respective failures in the Center, these women simply made up these allegations of sexual misconduct against Guru in some crazy-assed attempt to get attention.

Whatever appeal such a theory has -- and I don't think it has much based upon what we've discussed above -- it begins to break down with each successive revelation. One crazy woman, I could believe.

But four?

Last week, seeking some confirmation that I'm thinking clearly on these issues, I checked in with a prominent female disciple still active in the Center. I asked her if she believed Suchatula's story. She confirmed that she did.

When I asked her why she believed Suchatula's story, this disciple (who asked for anonymity) told me that she had had sex with Guru for more than a decade.

These women are telling the truth.

As shocking as it is to contemplate, Guru was not only having sex with his female disciples, but also encouraging some of his female disciples to have sex with each other. This makes me both extremely sad for my sister disciples so taken advantage of and extremely disappointed in Guru's behavior.

This is a very tough pill for my friends in the Center (and even some outside the Center) to swallow. I know that first hand, because it took me a long time to fully accept it as well.

To start, though, you must have not just the willingness but the desire to know the truth.

Isn't that the very definition of the word "seeker?"

That's Krishna and the Gopis, above, in a picture from the Smithsonian found here.

Neuroanatomy & Yoga

2009-10-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

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, I think integrating scientific advances into our practice of yoga can only benefit us. It might also give us further insight into the paradox we've been discussing. In other words, perhaps there's a neurological explanation for how a person could be capable of both an exalted meditative state and sexual misconduct.

Before we go there, though, let's think about this idea more generally.

Some time ago, my practice included concentrating on the various chakras or subtle nerve centers, which are said to tie one's physical organism to the larger universal forces at play in the world. One day, while I was thus concentrating, it occurred to me that while I was concentrating on my heart chakra, the action was taking place in my brain.

To understand my point, consider the phenomena of phantom limbs.

Some small percentage of people who have a limb amputated report still feeling the presence of their lost limb. The feeling is real, but obviously the existence of the limb is not. What's going on?

As it turns out, the primary motor cortex -- that part of the human brain responsible for processing sensory and motor information -- maintains a neurological map of the individual's body. Though bizarre looking, neuroscientists have produced a visual representation of this mental map, which is called the cortical homunculus or the "little man" inside the brain.

So, while a person might lose her hand in an accident, the neural map within her primary motor cortex might remain out of sync or not updated. Thus, to her the mental image of her hand, along with all its associated feelings, still exists in a very real way. As I began to hear about some groundbreaking work being done by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran to ease "phantom pains" being experienced by amputees, it occurred to me that neurology might have some application to yoga as well.

What if -- even though we experience them in designated areas of the body -- the chakras are actually seated in the brain?

Through the use of magnetic resonance imaging technology, neuroscientists are beginning to map areas in the brain that appear to be associated with our entire subjective life. The nervous systems and sex drive, for example, appear to be strongly associated with the aforementioned amygdalae, small areas within the medial temporal lobes of the brain, which operate below the conscious radar most of the time.

Our more conscious emotions appear to be processed by the ventral prefrontal cortex. One study suggests that those people who engage in consciously accepting and labeling negative emotions tend to gain some control over the autonomously acting amygdalae. Sounds like neurological support for tantra.

Communication and creativity may be centered in the medial prefrontal cortex. See this article about the use of MRI scans on jazz musicians while they improvise.

Insight seems to be associated with the right hemisphere anterior superior temporal gyrus, as discussed in this article.

The "presence of God" -- at least for the nuns in one study -- activated some 12 areas of the brain, quite apart from the areas of the brain activated when experiencing more worldly emotions.

Now, obviously, I'm no scientist and I've grossly oversimplified an extremely complex and new field of scientific study and discovery. (Here's a link to a nice overview of this emerging field by David Brooks.) Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that there is some real value to modern yogis in thinking about these types of studies and their findings.

I suspect that, like the amputee experiencing the phantom limb phenomena, my subjective mystical experiences are rooted in my brain. When I feel a psychic flame reaching out from the center of my chest, the action itself is taking place inside my own head -- just as the images I see, the scents I smell, and the things I taste are all experienced in differing areas of the brain.

That said, I'm not proposing that we are our brains. As I've previously posted, I assume that consciousness precedes matter. But if the process of yoga is a physical one, then it seems to me there's a place for a more modern view of the seat of our consciousness -- our brains.

I think this idea also provides us with another way to think about Guru's paradoxical nature.

Whether it's actually true in Guru's case or not, it's at least conceivable -- neurologically anyway -- that a person could have ready access to "high" spiritual experiences and yet engage in unethical behavior. Particularly, if such traits are governed by different and distinct areas of the brain.

If, for example, a person's orbitofrontal cortex is compromised or undeveloped, then that person will likely exhibit disinhibition or a disregard for social conventions which can manifest in many ways.

Likewise, with damage to (or lack of development of) the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, one's ability to distinguish between right and wrong -- to think in moral terms -- may be compromised (here's an article from the Wall Street Journal on the subject).

That wouldn't mean, however, that such a person couldn't experience spiritual ecstasy in a completely different and distinct area of the brain.

Would it?

To my mind, everything must be learned. We're not born with a knowledge about human relations and how to maturely navigate our sexual desires and romantic feelings. Instead, they're skills that we must learn -- either from others or from our own trials and errors -- and practice.

Just like meditation.

It's entirely conceivable to me that Guru -- born as he was in the first half of the 20th Century, in India, orphaned, and raised in the strict confines of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (the very model of our own Sri Chinmoy Center) -- never learned about sex, never learned how accept his natural desires, and never learned how to communicate his emotions in a healthy way.

That's why, I expect, he exploited the trust of some of his female disciples.

I'm not convinced, however, that his exalted meditations weren't just that: exalted.

Credit for the photo above goes here. I just stumbled upon this interesting two-year old article on Slate, which suggest how one might wire the brain for spiritual ecstasy.

Realization

2009-10-13T23:47:00.000-07:00

Well, better grab yourself a cup of coffee -- I'm partial to the Americano these days -- because we're about to engage in some theoretical reasoning. (I'm sorry, chai or herbal tea won't do -- you're gonna need the hard stuff.)

What is realization?

Call it what you will -- God realization, self realization, liberation, moksha, enlightenment, Brahma jnana -- without an answer to this question, we cannot know whether the conventional wisdom expressed by so many is correct. And what is that conventional wisdom?

The conventional wisdom is that realization and sexual misconduct cannot go together. That they are mutually exclusive personal attributes. That a realized person -- by definition -- cannot engage in immoral behavior. That an unethical person -- by definition -- cannot be realized. That's the conventional wisdom.

The conventional wisdom makes intuitive sense and is hard to argue with, but is it right?

If the state of realization is synonymous with moral rectitude, then I think we're on safe ground assuming that Guru was not realized (since we've already concluded that Guru's treatment of some of his female disciples was unethical). From that, of course, it would follow that my paradox conjecture -- that Guru could be both realized and act unethically -- is flat wrong.

If, however, the state of realization is not synonymous with moral behavior, then -- as a matter of logic anyway -- the paradox conjecture might have some merit.

Our inquiry, though, must begin by defining the term "realization." Here's the story of how I began to conceptualize the term and how my thinking about it has evolved over time.

I first began to think about the concept of self-realization when I was 12 years old, reading Paramahansa Yogananda's masterpiece, Autobiography of a Yogi. Swamiji's preferred term, it seemed, was "cosmic consciousness" and it took me in.

"Cosmic consciousness" has some panache. In contrast to the synonymous terms of "God-realization" and "self-realization" -- which both sound like fixed destinations -- cosmic consciousness sounds boundless and adaptable, liquid perhaps. In practice, based upon the examples Swamiji gave in his book, cosmic consciousness appeared to manifest itself in individuals as both free access to a perception of the Divine coupled with some facility within the individual for magical powers.

As an insecure 12 year old grappling with identity issues, the power of control over both oneself and the natural world seemingly promised by the cosmic consciousness described by Yogananda was extremely seductive. (You can read about some of my early "issues" here and more generally about how famed psychologist Erik Erikson explains the stage of development I was going through at the time here.)

Couple that seductive attraction with the seminal pop culture event of that same year (1977) -- Star Wars -- and the basic parameters of my cosmological worldview had been forged. The idea of an undivided and all pervasive intelligent Force -- free from anthropomorphism -- with which I could obtain oneness (or "realize" my existing oneness) with was an idea that seemed natural, if not obvious, to me at the time.

As we'll discuss, over time my concept of the aim of yoga -- realization -- evolved from this first simple understanding of my pre-teen years. One thing that stuck with me, however, was the discovery of my own ideal self-image. Whether it was Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the brown cloak of the Jedi or Sri Yukteswar in the gerua robe of the swami, both presented the same image to my young, wide-open eyes -- that of the wise, self-confident loner.

That image, that ideal -- of the wise, self-confident loner -- never left me.

As I approached my 16th birthday, I added to my working concept of what realization entailed. It included not just the image of the wise and quietly powerful loner (ala the fictional Ben Kenobi) but it also required a facility with trance.

To my mind, trance -- or samadhi -- became the hallmark of my understanding of realization. Contrary to my initial impression, though, not all masters -- I was learning -- presented the image of the wise, empowered loner. But they all, it seemed, had ready, conscious access to the Beyond.

As I became a disciple, more nuance was added. There were grades of trance, grades of exaltation I learned. While the experience of a trance of some kind during meditation might be personally transformative, it might not necessarily guarantee permanent access to such experiences.

So, realization wasn't just the experience of trance. Instead, it entailed some sense of permanence, some sense of free and easy access to the cosmic consciousness. Guru made this point more or less explicit.

In an uncomplicated (and seemingly contradictory) way, Guru introduced some more nuance into my developing sense of what realization was. In a general sense, Guru used simple metaphor, speaking of the "Golden Shore." The Center was a boat, Guru its captain, and the disciples its passengers. As long as we stayed in the boat -- i.e., never left the Center -- we would, one day, arrive at the Golden Shore of realization.

I didn't find such simple metaphors of practical use, but in some of his early talks and writings, Guru spoke of concepts like liberation, partial realization, full realization, partial avatars, and full avatars.

Whatever those words meant, they conveyed to me the idea that when it came to the "higher" stages of consciousness, there was a continuous spectrum leading from less awareness to more. In other words, despite the simple metaphor of relaxing in the Golden Boat to wake up only upon arrival at the Golden Shore, realization entailed a more organic process of unfolding consciousness.

By necessity, it seemed to me as a teenaged disciple, a seeker's growing sense of awareness would alert the seeker as he or she neared his or her goal. And despite the arbitrary labels -- partial realization versus full realization -- consciousness is not a linear function capable of being fixed with these types of rigid, mental signposts.

By the time I moved to New York as a young adult, my take on realization had been further refined by my introduction to Sri Ramakrishna and his small band of disciples.

My personal style as a spiritual loner -- the wise, self-confident individual inspired by Sri Yukteswar (the "real" Obi-Wan Kenobi) -- was bolstered by Ramakrishna's fiery exhortations to his disciples and the image of its result in the person of Swami Vivekananda.

The Gospel, however, conveyed something more subtle to my understanding of realization. If Sri Ramakrishna was not only realized but a full avatar to boot -- as I believed then and believe now -- then it was apparent that realization itself had far less purchase in the real world than I had previously thought.

As profound and exalted as Sri Ramakrishna's trance experiences were, they apparently had little positive effect on Thakur's ability to interact with the world outside a religious context. In fact, reading about his life from a distance, it's hard not to conclude that in a very real way he was weak and afraid of the world, just as five year old child might be.

Whatever realization gave to Sri Ramakrishna, it did not give him knowledge of the world. It did not give him the ability to read. It did not relieve him of a stutter. It did not give him the ability to earn his keep, look after his young wife, or manage his personal affairs. In short, realization seemingly gave Thakur conscious oneness with the Divine and the uncanny ability to talk and sing about that experience in a singularly unique way, but not much else.

As a young 20-something, my own experiences (humble as they were) seemed to confirm this idea (that an exalted spiritual state didn't necessarily translate into facility in any other fields of life).

So, by the time I left the Center, my concept of realization was already nuanced.

While I was personally attracted to the idea of the wise, quietly empowered spiritual loner (the Obi-Wan Kenobi model), I knew masters came in all shapes, sizes, and personalities. (Ever hear the apocryphal tales of Trailanga Swami?) And while a free and easy access to trance seemed to be a necessary attribute of realization, that exalted state said little to nothing about the individual master's accomplishments in any other field.

After leaving the Center, it would take another seven years before I experienced a reawakening and further refinement to my concept of realization.

Though the further refinements were made over the course of the following couple of years, in essence they came down to two basic ideas. First, that my concept of realization as a singular, static achievement was imprecise. Second, that a lifelong assumption of mine that there was necessarily some connection between my "outer" (objective) behavior or actions and my "inner" (subjective) experience of exaltedness was simply wrong.

On the first point, I credit Sri Aurobindo. I'd never read a book by Sri Aurobindo while in the Center, but I ate them up after my reawakening. It was Aurobindo's idea of the triple transformation (as I interpret it) that really affected my old concept of realization as a singular achievement.

Aurobindo identified three component parts to the human transformation: psychicazation, or the process by which the psychic being annexes the rest of the human psyche; universalization, or the process by which the individual begins to identify with the cosmic influences on the being; and supramentalization, or the process by which the transcendental consciousness takes root in the individual.

Importantly, Sri Aurobindo stresses that these three processes are independent of one another. While these processes may take place sequentially -- one after the other -- there's no hard and fast rule. In fact, they can take place simultaneously or in fits and starts.

This seemed important to me because it suggested -- and Aurobindo may have said as much -- that one may have solidified a direct link to the supramental or transcendental consciousness, as Sri Ramakrishna seemed to have done in our example above, but that alone didn't mean that one had complete psychic control of one's human nature. Realization wasn't just a matter of arriving at the Golden Shore.

It was more complicated than that.

On the second point -- that my actions didn't seem to bear on my subjective spiritual experiences -- I had my own life to show for it. I wasn't a celibate disciple; I drank, swore, got angry, spent my days studying "worldly" subjects, gave up meditating on Guru's picture. And yet, the psychic flame within continued grow and grow.

Again, I took surprising comfort in Sri Aurobindo's writings on this point, in particular his epic poem Savitri. Writing of Princess Savitri's father -- a king, and unknown to most, a sage -- Sri Aurobindo wrote the following lines, which I think underline this idea that there's no required connection between one's subjective consciousness and one's objective actions.

One and harmonious by the Maker's skill,
The human in him paced with the Divine.
His acts betrayed not the interior flame.
This forged the greatness of his front to Earth.

Apart he lived in his mind's solitude,
A demigod shaping the lives of men.
One soul's ambition lifted up the race;
A Power worked, but none knew whence it came.

He made great dreams a mold for coming things,
And cast his deeds like bronze to front the years.
His walk through time outstripped the human stride.
Lonely his days, and splendid like the Sun's.

I've grown to love this idea of the "interior flame" hidden from the sight of all others, of no outward appearance of "spirituality," of loneliness and inner splendor coexisting. And, of course, these particular lines appeal to my notion of the wise, self-confident loner.

Well, that's about it.

With the exception of one last component -- the neurological basis of spiritual experience -- this is where my understanding of realization stands. While conscious oneness with the Divine -- presumably through free and easy access to trance -- is the defining aspect of realization, as a practical matter that says little about the realized individual.

To my mind, realization does not mean -- necessarily -- that the realized individual has transformed the rest of his or her human psyche or organism.

That's the young Cambridge graduate, Indian revolutionary, and burgeoning yogi, Sri Aurobindo above.

Circling Back

2009-10-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

As I worried might happen, over the course of the last few posts I started losing sight of my larger point.

If I'm losing sight of it, I worry that you -- my reader -- may also be losing sight of it. So, I think it best to slow down now and review.

I think Guru both realized God and engaged in unethical behavior.

It is this paradox that I'd like to explain. Actually, to be precise, I'm not trying to explain the paradox itself. Rather, I'm attempting to explain the reasons why I think such a paradox is possible. I'm suggesting an alternative view of Guru -- one that rejects each extreme end of the extant opinion spectrum.

Unlike his most ardent supporters, I don't believe Guru was born into this world free from all human foibles. Unlike his most strident detractors, I don't believe Guru was a fraud.

I'm suggesting a third way to think about Guru.

The emphasis here should be on the word suggesting. I'm doing my best to articulate how I think about Guru. I do so in the hopes that it will spur you, too, to think about these issues in a nuanced way and, hopefully, to share your own views either as comments to these posts or, better yet, in your own future writings.

So far, I've stated the ethical case. What Guru did to Suchatula and the others was unequivocally wrong.

I've suggested that ethical standards alone may not be sufficient to judge a person's spiritual development (a topic I'll try to expand upon shortly).

I've stated my view that rejection of the world isn't the goal of yoga, rather a state of non-attachment is the goal.

And finally, we've discussed the principle of gaining control of one's nature through acceptance rather than through rejection and repression.

In essence, I suppose, I'm arguing in a long-winded way that that there is no necessary or fundamental connection between one's actions and one's subjective consciousness. To be perfectly frank, I'm arguing that there is no connection -- per se -- between your spiritual development and whether or not you engage in sex.

Think of Arjuna. He found enlightenment by killing hundreds (if not thousands) of his relatives over a real estate dispute. Certainly, we can have sex.

To explain the paradox, however, two questions remain to be addressed.

First, what do we mean by God realization? In my next post, I'll explain how I think of the concept.

Second, how can a state of high occult development like God realization coexist with a state of emotional and sexual dysfunction? Doesn't God realization mean, by definition, perfection? I'm not so sure and I'll share my thoughts in a following post.

At the very least, I hope you'll find some of these ideas thought provoking. And if you think I'm wrong, tell me why. It is only through the clash of ideas -- a civil clash, please! -- that together we can move closer to a more synthetic and complete truth.

Above is another of my favorite photos of Anandamayi Ma. When you get the chance, check out this library of photos of the beloved Mother.

The Tantra

2009-09-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

There's another way to facilitate non-attachment.

Through acceptance.

Through a conscious acceptance -- rather than the sanyassin's rejection -- one begins to demystify and thus weaken the influence of things once thought foreign, dangerous, and dark.

Like Harry Potter repeating the dreaded name of Lord Voldemort when nobody else will, the conscious acceptance and examination of those things that have influence over us is the first step towards gaining control.

To be sure, it's not a rigid control I'm thinking of. It's not control through confrontation, by directly pushing against those forces pushing against you. On the contrary, it's like judo -- using your opponent's momentum to your advantage. To be successful, you must bring your opponent close.

It's scary in the beginning.

For me, the process began with my reawakening. I had been out of the Center for about seven years, when out of the blue a psychic presence reappeared in my daily consciousness. It was the very same inner flame that had sustained me through much of my time as Guru's disciple.

By that time, though, things had changed.

I was no longer a celibate renunciate. I was a husband and father. I had spent four years in the Navy and, naturally, cursed and drank like a sailor. I was in graduate school and planning a career. It was all counter to what I had thought were the necessary prerequisites to the maintenance of a psychic awakening.

What was I to do?

I wasn't going to renounce my family and run back to the Center. I wasn't going to quit school ("I love college!"), shun alcohol, and suggest to my wife that we live "as brother and sister." And in any case, the fact that I had thoroughly embraced the world didn't seem to matter to the new psychic movement that had awakened within me.

Instead, I was faced with the task of trying to weave the two together -- my reborn spiritual life with my outer life.

As a practical matter, it seemed strange. During my time in the Center, I was in the practice of resisting inharmonious impulses by mentally pushing them into Guru. When a random or disagreeable thought caught my attention, I'd empty it into Guru with a sense of gratitude. I'd do this to his picture on my shrine, to him personally when I was in his presence, or into my psychic sense of him during the day.

I was always resisting such forces and emptying myself into Guru.

With my reawakening, however, I began to do the opposite. I began to accept. As I walked to school each morning doing my walking meditation, I mentally embraced or to be more precise, with an almost Pacific-like sense of broadness I embraced every movement within me (good and bad).

What I had once, in years past, emptied into Guru, I now absorbed myself (albeit into a much broader sense of my self).

It wasn't, of course, just during my walk to school that I employed this broad mode of acceptance (rather than resistance and rejection). I accepted all that I experienced. When I'd lose my temper at home and blow a gasket, I accepted the experience and somewhere I quietly registered the observation that "this is being mad."

After leaving a party, I'd note to myself: "this is being drunk." During sex, I'd notice -- in just a second of almost clinical remove -- "this is having sex." Through it all -- surprisingly to me at first -- the psychic flame that had rekindled within me continued to grow, undisturbed by any action I took.

Apparently, there was not necessarily a causal link between my physical, emotional, and mental actions and my further psychic development. This both shocked me at the time and opened up new vistas.

Old distinctions I had once held between "inner" and "outer" or "spiritual" and "worldly" began to disappear. For the first time, a non-dualistic sense of the Divine -- i.e., the concept that all is Brahman (not just the good stuff) -- began to feel like a living reality and not just some philosophical idea.

I had discovered the Tantra.

Arguably the most controversial subject in the modern practice of yoga, Tantra is the art of conscious acceptance.

In practice, it's the opposite of sanyassa or rejection, but its practitioners are at risk of suffering from the same mistake -- mistaking the means for the end. The difference, however, is that while the renunciate revels in his rejection of the world the tantrika indulges himself. As the much quoted Georg Feuerstein puts it, "Their main error is to confuse tantric bliss ... with ordinary orgasmic pleasure."

Like his sanyassin cousin, the tantrika is prone to buying into that system's self-reinforcing myth. For the sanyassin, the self-serving myth is that sex is inherently bad. That by having sex, one falls; one is stained forever. For the tantrika, the myth is that sex is inherently good, that it's "mystical." Thus, for the practitioner of what many derisively call "pop-tantra" or "California tantra" the sex drive must not just be accepted, but must be given free reign.

The word "tantra," however, simply means "to weave" and it's this core principle that's important. To accept and to weave into the fabric of one's day-to-day consciousness all aspects of existence -- the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the divine and the undivine.

In doing so -- in accepting rather than rejecting -- such distinctions begin to lose their meaning.

(Wikipedia provides a good overview of tantra here. See also its entry for "Neotantra." For a list of books on the subject of Tantra, see the Vedanta Society's site here.)

What a photo of a young Anandamayi Ma above. Do take the time to visit the wonderful collection of photos at this site.

Sanyassa & Tyaga

2009-09-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

I used to confuse the means for the end.

For those of us who spent any appreciable time on a path that required some measure of serious renunciation, this confusion is woven into the very fabric of the path of yoga itself. Here I speak of the confusion between renunciation (the means to an end) and the state of non-attachment (the end itself).

To be precise, it's not really confusion. It's conflation.

When you're on a path -- like that of the Sri Chinmoy Center -- which requires most of its followers to embrace a severe renunciation of the world and its pleasures (and pains), the tendency amongst the disciples is to conflate the physical, emotional, and mental act of the renunciation itself with the goal of achieving a state of non-attachment to the things of the world.

That's what I did anyway.

I would take one look at the photo of Swami Vivekananda above -- the very image of renunciation -- and say: "That's my goal." It's funny to think about now, but I remember that shortly after becoming a disciple -- while I was still in high school -- I would day dream about what it would be like to show up to my 25-year high school reunion "god realized." I imagined myself walking into some gathering of my former classmates -- all older and ravaged by time and the world -- with my flowing ochre robes and glowing face.

Renunciation and non-attachment, however, are not the same thing.

As should be apparent to you by now, when I think of these concepts, my mind floats back to the stories and heroes of my spiritual childhood, in particular to those of Sri Ramakrishna and his disciples.

For those of you who don't know, Sri Ramakrishna was a peasant.

Born and raised in the country to parents of modest means, he remained illiterate his entire life. He was barely able to sign his own name.

As Sri Aurobindo would note much later, Ramakrishna's intelligence was intuitive. He seized knowledge by identification and insight, by those processes once thought mysterious but now being explained, at least in part, by psychologists and other researchers as reported in books like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

I'm sure this was part of Thakur's charm. He could seize the truth of things quickly and then communicate that truth simply.

From time to time, for example, visitors to Ramakrishna's small room at the Dakshineswar temple grounds would ask him the meaning of one of India's most sacred texts: the Bhagavad Gita.

"The meaning of the Gita," he would say, "can be found by repeating the word itself."

"... gita-gita-gi-ta-gi-ta-gi-ta-gi-ta-gi-ta-gi-tagi-tagi ..."

"Tagi!"

"Tagi" is suggestive of the Bengali word for non-attachment: tyaga. That's the heart of the Gita's message: embracing action and doing one's duty in the world without being attached to the result of that action.

A linguist might argue that an equally correct translation of the word "tyaga" is renunciation. The linguist might say that, in essence, the Bengali words for renunciation (i.e., "sanyassa" and "tyaga") are one and the same.

Perhaps, but my point -- really a point I lifted from Sri Aurobindo's classic Essays on the Gita -- is a practical one, not a linguistic one. If the message of the Gita -- the philosophical backbone of most modern yoga practice -- were truly renunciation (sanyassa), then the story would never have gotten off the ground.

In essence, the story of the Gita is of the warrior Arjuna's conundrum: should he renounce fighting in an impending battle against his extended family or should he do his duty as a warrior? Arjuna looks to Krishna for advice. If physical renunciation (sanyas) had been Krishna's message in the Gita, then there'd be no story. When Arjuna laments that he'd rather run away and wonder the Himalayas than fight, Krishna would have said: "go for it." End of story.

Krishna, however, does not endorse this physical renunciation or rejection of the world. His message to Arjuna is to act with vigor -- to fight and kill -- but not to become attached to the results of his actions, whether bad or good. Call it what you will, but that's the message of the Gita.

That's the message of this post, too.

There's a huge difference between mastery of the physical, emotional and mental act of rejection -- which made up such a huge part of our lives as disciples -- and mastery of the state of non-attachment. In fact, the discipline of renunciation -- as necessary as I think it is -- almost by definition is the practice of negative attachment (as opposed to non-attachment).

The approach of Alcoholics Anonymous is a good example of this dynamic. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. They have people who have been off the sauce for two or three decades who still stand up and introduce themselves by saying, "Hello, my name is Joe, and I'm an alcoholic."

As complete a physical renunciation it is for an alcoholic to be sober for 30 years, one would never confuse that renunciation with mastery or with non-attachment to drink. On the contrary, he is as attached to the bottle as he was 30 years ago when he had his last drink. It's just a negative attachment (rather than an affirmative one).

Think of it this way: does perfect renunciation of the act of driving a car make you a competent driver? The question answers itself.

To master driving, you must drive.

Swami Vivekananda knew this distinction. He knew that to truly master the world, one must embrace it. How could you learn to be a potter if you refused to touch the clay?

Ultimately, however, we're not really talking about driving a car or touching clay, are we? No. We're talking about something else: grappling with our human nature.

Inevitably, we're talking about sex.

Metaphysical Assumptions

2009-09-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

Ethics aren't everything.

Although Guru's misconduct towards Sevika, Rupavati, Phulela and Suchatula was just that -- misconduct -- I'm not convinced that unethical behavior as a rule proves that an individual has no spiritual development. Before I can take up that subject, however, I think I should slow down and lay some groundwork.

I believe that consciousness precedes matter.

In other words, I'm not an atheist.

As a result of their experiences in the Center, I realize that some of my friends have become atheists. Some have embraced a purely scientific cosmology. In their view -- whether they've stopped to articulate it this way or not -- matter comes before consciousness. Without the brain, there is no mind. Without life, there is no existence.

That's a perfectly acceptable assumption about the nature of existence. It's just not mine. Which, by the way, is not to say that I buy into the somewhat simplistic notion that I must -- as a believer -- reject the workings of the rational mind. I certainly do not believe that, as I hope is apparent to those who have followed this memoir so far.

On the contrary, as Sri Aurobindo explains so well in The Life Divine, now more than ever the path of yoga requires a rational mind.

For that vast field of evidence and experience which now begins to reopen its gates to us, can only be safely entered when the intellect has been severely trained to a clear austerity; seized on by unripe minds, it lends itself to the most perilous distortions and misleading imaginations and actually in the past encrusted a real nucleus of truth with such an accretion of perverting superstitions and irrationalising dogmas that all advance in true knowledge was rendered impossible.

(The Life Divine (1st Ed. 1949) The Greystone Press, Ch. II, "The Two Negations: The Materialist Denial," p. 12.)

The point is, simply, that if you believe that nothing exists outside the material -- that there is no higher force or divine purpose to our life here on Earth -- then for you, ethics may very well be the end all and be all of human behavior.

If this is your view, then there may be little more for us to discuss.

My further musings about the interplay between the rigid requirements of ethical or moral standards and the much broader, elastic, and sometimes conflicting demands of yoga will mean nothing to you if you're a strict materialist. You're more than welcome to come along for the ride -- don't get me wrong -- I'm just trying to head off any quite justifiable arguments that my analyses are based upon a belief in the mystical (because, of course, they are).

Writing about metaphysical assumptions -- necessary though it may be -- presents two difficulties for me.

First of all, I don't want to come off as a blowhard. I don't have access to any secret knowledge or know any better than anyone else. These are just some of the ideas -- hypotheses really -- that inform my thinking about Guru and the Center experience in general. Like any hypotheses, mine may be wrong.

Second, there's always a risk that writing distorts the reality of these ideas. These metaphysical ideas -- to the extent they are real -- strike me as organic. Writing, by necessity, is linear. Reducing these elusive and hard to understand principles to writing -- and to a lesser extent just reasoning about them -- tends to strip them of their natural complexity and turns them into mechanistic rules.

As Sri Aurobindo notes, above, the untrained mind tends to encrust "a real nucleus of truth with such an accretion of perverting superstitions and irrationalising dogmas that all advance in true knowledge" is rendered impossible.

Nevertheless, I still think that we should consider a few more ideas before moving on. In addition to assuming that consciousness is a prerequisite for matter --- that the idea precedes the creation -- I also assume a non-dual monism.

In other words, I assume that we are all individual and unique expressions of a single whole consciousness. I prefer to conceive of the Divine as a formless energy or force; I tend to avoid the practice of anthropomorphizing.

I think of that permanent individual within each of us as the psychic being or soul, if you prefer that term. (It might be worth clicking here for a short refresher course on my interpretation of the lexicon of the Center.)

As I conceive it, the general purpose of the psychic being over time -- over the course of incarnations -- is to slowly gain strength and influence over nature.

I was trying to come up with a lighthearted analogy to help explain this process and I thought about gaming. For a simple example, consider computer chess. On my MacBook Air, I can play chess against the computer and I'm given a sliding difficulty scale that I can adjust for my level of play. When I make the game easy -- very easy -- I can beat the computer. When I make the game hard, I lose almost immediately.

Somewhere in the middle and the game is a challenge -- sometimes I win, sometimes I don't.

I think of spiritual evolution in much the same way. As the psychic being takes on more and more experience, it's strength -- and thus its influence -- grows. At some point, its influence begins to creep into the organism's conscious mind. This is when the seeker is born. With time, the psychic being begins to establish beachheads in the body, emotional life, and mind of the seeker. Eventually, that annexation becomes complete.

Is it really complete, though, and at what level of difficulty?

I think, for example, of my own time in the Center. It's all well and good that as a young twenty-something -- physically fit, emotionally detached, uneducated, without a care in the world -- I could experience a trance-like state, even if just for a few moments. But what happens when the game is made a little more difficult?

What happens when the demands of age, experience, education, spouse, children, and career all up the ante?

In my case, in hindsight, it seems my psychic being's influence was strong enough to annex much of my young and undeveloped psyche. Whether it's strong enough to hold the ground it already won years ago under the pressures of a modern, domesticated life is still an open question and, perhaps more to the point, still an ongoing process.

It is in this way that the ongoing process of evolution strikes me as similar to computer chess. As the core of your being becomes stronger and more stable, the difficulty level is ramped up (whether in this life or the next). In this view, the life of renunciation (sanyassa) is not the goal; it's just a means to the more complete goal of non-attachment (tyaga).

I touched on this idea in my post about Anugata.

The fact that a particular spiritual master may have experienced something profound and all encompassing when living under certain limited circumstances -- say as an all renouncing sadhu -- doesn't necessarily mean that such "self mastery" carries over when the game is leveled up, when the sadhu begins to embrace the world and extend his psychic influence over forces he had hitherto renounced.

Ultimately, that's what I think yoga is all about. It's about embracing life in all its forms.

"All life is Yoga."

The photo above is of the holy Shiva lingam at the Amarnath temple.

The Ethical Case

2009-09-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

What Guru did was wrong.

If you believe the allegations made by Sevika, Rupavati, Phulela, and Suchatula -- as I do -- then the ethical case against Guru's behavior is straightforward. His conduct was clearly unethical (or immoral if you prefer that term).

(I wish I could footnote, because having re-read each of their testimonials, I feel compelled to note here that Phulela's testimonial strays a bit from what she experienced directly to things she either heard from others or assumed was happening. While I accept as true those experiences she recounts from first hand experience (i.e., having sex with Guru), I don't embrace some of her other accusations (i.e., "there were signs [Guru] was also having relations with men" or the implication that Guru's misconduct was widely known).

In the most general way, Guru misrepresented himself to seekers like me who joined the path thinking him to be a lifelong celibate yogi. While my thinking about the subject of sex has evolved over the last three decades (something I intend to post about in the near future), at the time I was actively searching for a guru (1980-81), celibacy in a master was a selling point.

The Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh or "Osho" -- and his more permissive attitude toward sex -- was much in the news back then, and not in a good way. I was looking for the opposite. Sri Chinmoy presented himself as the anti-Osho. Guru's path was strict; celibacy was required.

I suspect that had I known back then that Guru was having sex -- with his disciples no less -- I would not have joined the path.

As things turned out, however, I'm not sure I was harmed by this deception. My life was better for having met Guru, for being his disciple. Nevertheless, Guru hid his sexual activity from me (and most others) and this deception was wrong. No question about it.

I'm pained more by Guru's treatment of Sevika, Rupavati, Phulela, and Suchatula (and the other unnamed disciples like them). There's no question that Guru's conduct, as alleged by these former disciples, was unethical.

It constituted not only the implicit misrepresentation Guru made to all disciples about the status of his sex life, but compounded that deceit by breaching the sacred trust those women gave to him. Guru abused his authority.

Over the years, I've heard both disciples and former disciples downplay these allegations by saying that, even if the allegations are true, the acts described were consensual. In other words, these women shouldn't be complaining -- they all could have said "no" to Guru's request.

While I agree that this is literally true -- each of these women could have, and in hindsight probably wish they had, said "no" from the beginning -- as a practical matter, assuming these women were capable of consent ignores reality. Guru held all the power. Their lives were consecrated to the concept of unconditional surrender to the divine in Guru. By definition, their ideal was to say "yes" to anything asked of them.

This concept was litigated not so long ago in a lawsuit brought by a former disciple of Swami Kriyananda. In that case, the young woman disciple alleged, among other things, that the swami and the spiritual community he founded -- Ananda -- had perpetrated a fraud against her. In the course of discovery in that case, the swami admitted to having sex with a number of female devotees.

In court, the swami claimed the acts were consensual. The jury believed otherwise. In his successful closing argument, plaintiff's attorney Michael J. Flynn put it to the jury this way:

Why isn't it consensual?

He's the Swami, she's a young female nun adoring him. Believing that he's all these things. The power in that, in his position as a swami and her position as a nun, when he asks for this kind of conduct, is something that you the jury are going to have to address and comes to grips with. How can that be?

Reverend Cooper-White said, "It can't be consensual. The mind of the person here, and the mind and the power of the person here, prohibits consent."

Why?

Because of not only the undue influence, but the mind of the person who's getting sucked into this situation. The mind of the person believing that this man can take her to God. But the fact that he has all of the accouterments, he's got all the tools of power, he's the Spiritual Director, he's supposedly a man of God, he's got power of employment over everyone in the community. He's got power over their housing, power over their spiritual lives. So a young woman coming in, idolizing and adoring someone like Swami Kriyananda is going to submit. She's going to submit against her better judgment, and against what's good for her.

If you believe that the principal allegations made by Sevika, Rupavati, Phulela and Suchatula are true -- as I do -- then the ethical case against Guru's misconduct is straightforward.

Guru was wrong to portray himself as a lifelong celibate yogi.

He abused his power over Sevika, Rupavati, Phulela and Suchatula (and apparently others) by coercing them to do things they didn't want to do.

He breached the sacred trust these women gave to him.

For this I am truly sad.

The photo above is of another great sculpture -- The Head of Justice -- by Audrey Flack. Check out her other amazing work here.

Paradox

2009-09-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Is it possible that both were true?

Is it possible that Guru both realized something profound in his silent meditation and was emotionally dysfunctional in his active life?

I think it is.

Over the remaining posts of this blog, I'll do my best to articulate how I've reached this conclusion. It will take a fair bit of deconstruction, not just of the myth of Guru himself but perhaps more importantly much of the language that permeated the Center-life.

We'll also have to think about ethics and yoga. Are the demands of ethics and yoga always, necessarily, the same?

We'll have to think about sex, too.

Let me first emphasize, however, that this conclusion of mine -- that Guru was both extremely advanced in some ways, and flawed in others -- is not for everyone. It's just the conclusion that works the best for me. I'm not putting forth this theory as the be all and end all assessment of Sri Chinmoy. How could it be? I only experienced a very thin slice of the human dynamo that was Guru.

It's just that neither of the other dominant takes on Guru -- that he was either a fraud (or a fraud "with powers," whatever that means) or that he was a celibate, virgin, God-realized avatar -- jibed with my own developing understanding. I needed some other explanation to make sense of what seemed to me to be the conflicting evidence.

Guru facilitated within me some inner development that, as I'll discuss in further posts, I couldn't have achieved without him. From my first meditation on his photo to my peak experience at Rutgers, Guru tended my growing psychic being until it could walk on its own -- and then he prodded me to leave the Center.

Does the fact that he was having sex with Sevika during that time period change that?

In essence, that's what initially led me to look for a theory that would explain both of these phenomena. It is simply my assessment as it stands today. It's the solution that has allowed me to square the evidence as I've experienced it.

Like with any other deconstruction, however, there's the risk that by breaking up the Sri Chinmoy experience -- my Sri Chinmoy experience -- into its component parts and analyzing them piece by piece, we may lose a more holistic, more complete mosaic of who Guru actually was. I'll try to avoid that.

There's also the risk that some of my readers -- whose experience in the Center was quite different from mine -- might misinterpret any discussion of Guru's good qualities (of which he had many) as an effort to downplay or justify his bad actions towards some. On this score, I can only urge my burgeoning critics to read. Though it sounds redundant to my ear -- read closely.

An explanation is not necessarily the same thing as a justification.

Finally, a word of explanation to some of my friendly critics who, while not necessarily disputing the factual bases for the negative allegations made against Guru, nevertheless think writing about the subject is unwise. On this score, I can only say that I write for myself.

As I've written this memoir, from time to time I've had to wrestle with how to -- or whether to -- write about certain subjects. In those circumstances, I've tried to imagine what I'd like to read in the much later future. If I were a young seeker in some future life, what would I like to read?

Honestly, I prefer the truth, unshaded by the well-intentioned ignorance of others.

Long ago, succeeding generations of Sri Ramakrishna's disciples decided it would be better for us later seekers if we didn't know that Thakur was a little odd. That he asked some young men -- boys really -- to stand before him undressed. The master, it was said, could divine the bent of a young man's mind by which side of his balls his johnson hung.

Or that despite the impression a reader might get from reading the translated and much edited Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna that Thakur never touched a woman and barely ever saw his wife Sarada Devi, he actually slept in the same bed with his wife for some period of time.

Then there are the geniuses running Paramahansa Yogananda's organization, SRF. They, too, think they know better. They edited photographs of the master to remove the crucifix he often wore in public.

I suppose it's easy enough to understand the impulse of some to want to hide the dirty laundry. And, perhaps, doing so helps the after surviving organization -- whether its the Ramakrishna Order, SRF, or the Center in this case -- build up the myth, which in turn brings in new seekers. I don't know. Ultimately, however, it's a disservice to those of us "grownups" who would just as soon know the truth.

So, on the off chance that in some future life I'm looking for a nuanced view of what it was like to be a direct disciple of Sri Chinmoy, I'll leave the hagiography to others.

In the end, reaching an objective truth about who Guru was and what his true motivations were in a way satisfying to all will be impossible. Ultimately, the path of yoga is a solitary, individual affair, and each of us -- as individuals -- must reach a conclusion that is satisfactory to each of us.

Perhaps all we'll ever truly be able to do is to look back in perplexity and wonder, as my friend Sudhir often did, and ask: "Who was that guy?"

The photo above is my favorite shot of Paramahansa Yogananda. It really has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but I had to find some way to use it.

Things Have Changed

2009-08-26T22:34:00.000-07:00

Since December 2001, when I first read Sevika's allegations of sexual misconduct by Guru, I assumed the allegations were true.

Perhaps it was my young legal mind at work, but I knew that if I could come to grips with the possibility that Guru had been having sex -- with his disciples no less -- then I would be better able to conduct the kind of sober, long-term analysis that I had thought would eventually be necessary.

It's that process -- the way in which I tried to reach an accommodation in my own mind between the Guru I had known and experienced and the very different Guru described by a handful of female disciples -- that I had originally wanted to explore with this memoir.

The little discussion there is online about Guru seemed (and still seems) so partisan. Nothing I had read expressed the more nuanced, more complicated, understanding of Guru that I (and perhaps a few others) had come to.

Everything was black and white -- I was looking for the more realistic shades of gray.

As I first began to outline this memoir, I had planned on writing a single post describing the importance of loyalty and gratitude, followed by perhaps a half-dozen posts exploring the implications of the hypothetical worst case scenario and asking "what if."

I suppose I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. In my grandiose way, I wanted to bridge the gap between the most devoted disciples still in the Center and the most hard boiled cynics. When it came down to it, though, I couldn't do it.

I wrote the "loyalty" post, but could go no further.

I think I best expressed the conundrum I was feeling then in an email to a former disciple friend of mine, to whom I turn for advice and clear thinking from time to time:

Boy, was it a struggle thinking about how to approach this subject. Months and months ago, I envisioned a complete expose or multi-part essay -- perhaps five or six posts covering the allegations of sexual impropriety.

Then, as I responded to you just a week or so ago, I thought I'd whittled it down to just two, snappy posts. But after writing the first one -- in essence about loyalty -- I've now found it impossible to post the second one (the one exploring the "what if" question and assuming that the allegations were true).

It seemed incongruous to me to say I'm loyal to Guru in one post, and then in the next post to assume the allegations true and discuss. Do you understand and think I'm right about that?

I do have lots to say, and going through the process of assuming the allegations true did lead me to a stronger sense of spiritual self-confidence, but I don't see how I get around my loyalty post.

I guess I've resigned myself to one of the principles I've discovered in writing this blog, which is that I don't have to share everything. Thus, while a particular process has been beneficial to me, that doesn't mean I necessarily have to blog about it.

Anyway, I thought I owed you some kind of explanation because I had just told you that I had planned two posts on the subject, and then just posted one.

As I wrote, I had resigned myself to posting no more on this subject. Then things changed.

Shortly after I wrote the email above, my sister Nirbachita came to live with us here in San Diego. She had been living with Pinak in Puerto Rico. Within a few days, she got a call from an old friend and disciple named Suchatula.

Suchatula and Nirbachita had gone to high school together and joined the Center together. They were close, but as time wore on, they grew apart as my sister slowly drifted away from the Center. So, Suchatula's phone call was a bit of a surprise. When it was over, Nirbachita was convinced that "something" was up.

Over the next few weeks, Suchatula unburdened herself of her sad and shocking story. She authorized Nirbachita to post her story, but to do so anonymously.

Suchatula has since courageously embraced her story.

I believe every word of it, without reservation.

The picture above is of Guru and Suchatula on her 25th birthday.

Databir

2009-08-16T17:32:00.000-07:00

The most remarkable disciple I've ever met is -- without question -- Databir. Nobody else comes close.

In my early days as a disciple, when I was still living in California and only dreaming of life with my guru in New York, silent meditation was my forte. It was the one thing that I was extremely good at right from the start, and if you'll pardon the conceit, I thought I was better at it than most of the other disciples I observed.

You might fairly ask, how could I know that I was "better" at it than the others I observed? I don't have a good answer for that question. I didn't understand it myself -- I just knew. It was part of the gift, I suppose. Like Sri Ramakrishna was fond of saying, it was like one hemp smoker always being able to recognize another hemp smoker, even across a crowded room.

In any event, that psychic communion time was precious to me. As I moved to New York, however, I began to worry that, unless I was careful, I'd lose myself in the daily routine of being a "local."

There was good reason to worry. Guru routinely put down the local disciples en masse. They had "fallen" he had said, and as it became clear to some of my friends that I would be moving to New York permanently, they warned me "not to become a local." Key to avoiding such a fate, I figured, was keeping up my daily meditation practice at home.

That turned out to be impossible.

If you were a "local" disciple -- and a guy -- then the way to get physically closer to Guru was through hard work and self sacrifice. By "hard work" I don't mean just working hard on a particular project or for a set period of time. No. I mean losing sleep on a regular -- if not indefinite -- basis.

For the very short time that I kept up such a pace, for example, I was expected to be at work at the Smile of the Beyond by 8 a.m. and I would work until 4 p.m. If Guru wasn't at the tennis court, I'd get in a run, then shower and head to that evening's function. Afterwards, I might head back to the Smile -- by which time it might be 10:30 or 11 p.m. -- where I'd wash dishes for Bipin and Pulin or do Databir's clean-up chores (while they were up at Guru's house). Sometime after midnight, the boys would return, whereupon we might all head out on a road crew mission to re-paint one of Guru's running courses or drive into Manhattan to poster for an upcoming concert. I might then hit the sack at 2 or 3 a.m.

Rinse. Repeat.

After a single week like that, the idea that I'd get up even a half hour early to meditate before work was absurd. As it turned out, sitting in front of a bedroom shrine no longer seemed necessary. Meditating in front of Guru personally almost everyday, combined with hours of selfless service, resulted in a continuous sense of euphoria that seemed to exude from my very pores. The only problem -- in hindsight -- was that I was only able to keep this frenetic schedule up for a few months before I had to begin drawing some boundaries for myself.

Databir kept it up for almost four decades.

I remember little about the details of Databir's background, except that he was a jock in high school, went to Wesleyan University -- where he played linebacker on the football team -- and upon graduation in or around 1970 became a disciple. On some of our late night sojourns into Manhattan to put up posters, Databir would regale us with stories of his around the world adventure after graduating college. His father, he'd said, gave him an around-the-world ticket as a graduation gift, whereupon Databir travelled the globe.

It was never clear to me how much of the stories were true -- wrestling tigers in India, for example, seemed to be a bit of exaggeration designed to keep me and Ketan awake in the back seat of his station wagon (the front seat being reserved for Guru's use) -- but that didn't matter. It was the excitement with which Databir told the stories and how he could work himself into almost hysterical laughter at our incredulous looks while listening to him.

In my early New York days, before I had officially been granted local status or had secured an apartment of my own, I slept in Databir's living room. Among the books I came across in his house that winter was one I hadn't seen before.

It looked just like one of Guru's -- having apparently been printed by Agni Press -- but it's author was "Casey Waters." It told in simple prose a series of funny and inspiring anecdotes from "Casey's" early discipleship. (How I wish I could remember the name of that book or have a copy of it to quote from. Only a limited number were originally printed and as I recall it may have seen a second printing sometime later, but I've found no reference to it on the web. If anyone has it, please let me know.)

I remember only fragments now. How young Casey meditated 8 to 10 hours a day. How he used to stalk Guru's house, hoping for a glimpse of his master. How one time, Guru and the disciples were taking a bus trip, and for some reason Guru asked Casey to come up to the front. When he did, Guru told him to get off the bus and run back to Jamaica, New York. Casey got off the bus somewhere near the Tappan Zee Bridge -- almost 40 miles away! (Check this for some perspective.) I found the book to be tremendously inspiring.

From the mid-to-late 1980s, Guru played a lot of tennis. I think I can speak for all of the guys who made up my small circle of close friends amongst the locals -- Databir, Ketan, Bipin, Pulin, and later Sagar, amongst others -- that late summer afternoons at the court were the best of times. Within the Center, Guru had a pecking order for whom he would play tennis with and in what order.

In New York, Databir was at the top of that pecking order and they'd play together for hours sometimes. The intensity with which Databir would return the ball to Guru -- often with both feet leaving the ground as he whacked the ball with his forehand -- was something to behold.

As people look back upon the disciples of Sri Chinmoy, it may be tempting for some to overlook Databir. That would be a mistake.

Databir's humility makes him small, almost invisible. In this regard, he reminds me of one of Sri Ramakrishna's little known disciples: Durga Charan Nag, or as he was called by those who knew him, Nag Mahasay.

In comparing Swami Vivekananda and Nag Mahasay, it was said that both escaped the net of Maya by different means. While Swamiji became too big to be ensnared by the net of illusion, Nag Mahasay became too small, ultimately slipping through the mesh.

I won't recount Nag Mahasay's biography here, but it's worth the read if you haven't read about him before. (Here's a link to Guru's retelling of some Nag Mahasay's biographical anecdotes.) What gives his humility power, however, is the fact that in being humble, Nag Mahasay -- like Databir -- was really sacrificing something. In other words, it's relatively easy to be a humble person when you don't have extraordinary skills or capabilities. If you're small by nature, it's not a big stretch to embrace the way of humility.

Databir's all-encompassing humility aside, under the surface there is nothing small about him. He has a prodigious, well-trained mind coupled with a physical energy that has outpaced all of his spiritual peers.

If you ask who was Guru's best disciple, then the answer is simple.

It's Databir.

Nobody else comes close.

The photo of Databir, above, was taken by Unmesh. You can see his other fine photos here. You can visit the Nag Mahashay Ashram here.

Objectivity

2009-08-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

Emotions -- whether justified or not -- are the biggest hurdle to thinking objectively.

I've found this to be true in my law practice. Sometimes, parties to a lawsuit hate each other so much that they'd prefer to pay their lawyers to continue the lawsuit rather than pay one another to settle the case. In such circumstances, I often find myself playing two roles.

On the one hand, I must show my client support. The last thing he wants to hear -- while paying me lots of his hard earned money -- is any sympathy from me for his opponent. In this regard, I sometimes need to do a little hand holding, to give my client a shoulder to cry on, to let my client know that I'm in his corner no matter what.

On the other hand, however, I'm not being paid to be a yes man. I'm being paid for my best professional advice, which in turn requires me to be objective. I'm not being paid to tell my client what he wants to hear, but rather what he needs to hear. This is true particularly when it means acknowledging the strengths of the other side.

Balancing these two roles -- being empathetic versus being coldly rational and objective -- can be tricky, and I've struck upon a phrase to describe the biggest obstacle to thinking rationally about highly charged affairs.

The phrase is "emotionally induced autism" and it comes into play when thinking about Guru and the Center.

I struck upon this phrase after watching this great talk given by Malcolm Gladwell about his book Blink. Autism, in its most general sense, is a disorder that can -- among other things -- impede one's ability to process sensory data. In his talk, Gladwell discusses the physiology of certain types of police encounters. Specifically, the impact of stress on the decision making of police officers.

Gladwell suggests that police officers' experiences of intense stress temporarily work on their brain's processing ability in a way similar to how autism affects the processing ability of people suffering from that disorder. In other words, as police officers approach a scene of danger, various physiological processes -- like the release of adrenaline and increased heart rate -- impede the officer's ability to process many types of extraneous sensory data. This, in turn, enables the police officer to focus upon and respond to only the perceived threat in front of him or her.

As Gladwell makes clear, however, this phenomena is both good and bad. In terms of personal survival, focus on the bad guy: good. In terms of blindness to data suggesting the "bad guy" isn't actually a bad guy: not so good. Gladwell uses the sad case of Amadou Diallo to great effect to illustrate the devastating downside to the autistic-like impact of stress and emotion on the reasoning mind.

High emotions -- however caused -- threaten to disable one's ability to be objective. Case in point: trying to think rationally about Guru and about one's experience in the Center.

Some people saw nothing bad. Their honest experience was a positive one, and many (though not all) of these people are still in the Center. When presented with evidence, suggestions, or arguments contrary to their positive experiences of Guru, many of these people naturally get defensive. Guru, the Center, the disciple-life is central to their identity. By challenging Guru -- and their personal, direct experience of Guru -- you are challenging them.

When a person feels defensive, thinking rationally about a problem is more difficult.

This logic applies to those on the other end of the spectrum, too. Some former disciples have nothing but bad feelings about Guru and their Center experience. Whatever the cause, their feelings are heartfelt. To acknowledge the good of the Center -- the help Guru provided them -- is almost impossible. To them, acknowledgment of the positive smacks of justification of the negative.

This, of course, is especially true for those few who truly feel victimized by Guru, who feel that whatever good came of their Center experience has been far outweighed by the bad. For these former disciples, objectivity may not be possible nor perhaps advisable.

Of these two camps, I fall squarely within the former rather than the latter. I saw nothing bad. On the contrary, my disciple experience was overwhelmingly positive. There were things I didn't like -- the proselytizing, the tattle-tailing, the weightlifting, the public relations campaigns in general -- and I've been upfront about that in this memoir.

The effects of some of the meditations I had sitting in front of Guru, however, still linger with me today.

And while Guru for the most part treated me with kid gloves, he wasn't so gentle with my sister Nirbachita. In other words, I'm personally aware that when looking back on my Center experience for explanations, I cannot simply extrapolate in a straight line from my experience to some larger positive conclusion.

That said, neither was I scarred -- emotionally or otherwise -- by my nine years in the Center. Perhaps that will allow me to muse objectively about some very emotional topics in the coming posts.

That's Malcolm Gladwell above. Here's an archive of his great articles for The New Yorker.

Akuli

2009-08-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

I got an email the other day that reminded me of a story I had forgotten about.

The email came from the brother of a longtime disciple who is still in the Center. Apparently, their mother's health is declining. Having lost touch with his sister, the brother wrote me hoping that perhaps I could help him get the message to his sister.

His sister is Akuli.

When I first met Akuli, her name was "Mirriam." She was a mousy girl who worked seemingly endless hours at Annam Brahma for little money. Then one day, she disappeared. It turned out that -- like my old friend Pulin -- "Mirriam's" family had her kidnapped by deprogrammers.

Unlike Pulin, however, there was never any concerted effort made to find "Mirriam" and get her back, that I had been aware of anyway. I suspect this was because almost as soon as she was discovered missing, she was back among us.

As it turned out, "Mirriam" had taken a different approach with her captors than Pulin had with his. Instead of playing along with them, "Mirriam" simply chanted Guru's name. Out loud. Over and over again. This apparently lasted a couple of days, until her captors could take no more and released her.

That's how "Mirriam" became Akuli.

God knows what drives some parents to be so colossally stupid. Misguided love, I suppose. Religious zeal? Plain old ignorance? The zeitgeist of the 1980s probably played a role, too, what with the 1978 Jonestown massacre still fresh in the minds of so many.

None of that is a real excuse though and I wonder if I would have had it in me in later life to forgive my own parents had they made the same mistake. I'm not so sure. Having your adult child kidnapped and held by the lowlifes who perpetuate deprogramming is unforgivable. Had it happened to me, I doubt I would have had the poise, self-control, and one-pointedness that Akuli demonstrated.

I'm sure one great benefit Akuli realized from that horrible experience, though, is the fact that her faith is stronger than those who would try to do her harm.

She's the stronger person.

If there's one person who might forgive a parent for such a crime, it would be Akuli.

Here's an interesting story by Akuli, whose spiritual name literally means eagerness or enthusiasm (I think).

Gaining Influence

2009-08-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

A knock against Ranjana -- never loudly voiced -- had always been her seemingly ever growing circle of assistants.

At least that was true when I was living in New York ('85-'90). Even then, she commanded the allegiance of a large segment of the local female disciples and was making inroads amongst some of the men as well. Her influence began at Divine Robe Supreme, a clothing and sari shop that she managed (and perhaps owned), which was dedicated to outfitting the local women disciples. (Guys could also buy their whites there.) Women, it was said, could expect some bad juju if they were found to be wearing saris not purchased at Divine Robe.

Ranjana's more direct influence over many of the more dedicated women disciples came with her stewardship of the "Jharna-Kala girls." Guru called his art "Jharna-Kala" or fountain-art in Bengali. The Jharna-Kala girls were basically in charge of managing Guru's art and exploiting it for commercial purposes: making cards, stationary and other small cottage industry items. Not all of the local women disciples belonged -- membership was by invite only. Within the confines of the Center, being a Jharna-Kala girl afforded some measure of prestige.

Ranjana's influence and visibility increased marginally in the late '80s when she formed a relatively small group of bhajan or devotional singers. In my last year or two in the Center -- when my enthusiasm was at its nadir -- Guru gave the bhajan singers a lot attention. They were put up front and center to lead some very long, all night devotional singing sessions.

Even at the time I was in the Center, I had mixed feelings about Ranjana's growing coterie of assistants and the apparent increase in influence.

On the one hand, I saw it as a positive development for women seekers in general. The modern path of yoga -- which I define as those yogic traditions that sprang up in the wake of Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) -- has, with few exceptions, been a male-centric path. In that sense, the fact that Guru's two most prominent disciples were women (i.e., Ranjana and Lavanya) struck me as a good thing.

And while rumors swirled in some circles that Ranjana could be a bit of a taskmaster, a person had to learn leadership skills somewhere. In my view, that's exactly what Guru was doing, at least in part: teaching Ranjana how to lead by giving her a chance to learn on the job. So, I discounted the importance of such rumors even if they were true (which was not a given).

So, from the broader viewpoint of empowering women, I had no problem with the idea of Ranjana's growing influence. On the other hand, however, I found the reality of some disciples being subservient to another disciple to be incomprehensible.

To take it even a step further, I found the idea that a disciple would let another disciple act in a subservient way towards herself to be a little repugnant.

In other words, there are two sides to a superior-subordinate relationship. First, the subordinate must be willing to submit. Second, the superior must be willing to accept the subordinate's submissiveness. When it came to relationships between the disciples, neither side of this equation computed to me.

Even by the mid-1980s, there were both men and women disciples who were treating Ranjana -- with Guru's apparent encouragement -- with veneration. As I've discussed, I like Ranjana and feel some natural kinship with her. But veneration? I didn't get that.

I did understand the concept of serving more senior disciples. When I was first beginning to transition from a California disciple to a local New York disciple, my closest disciple friend at the time -- Jigisha -- would often remark that by lightening the burden of Guru's closest disciples you could, in a very real way, allow those disciple to serve Guru more efficiently.

For example, in my first few months in New York I spent my late night hours washing dishes and cleaning up the Smile of the Beyond, in essence doing work assigned Databir, Bipin and Pulin, while they were up at Guru's house. Had I not helped them, when they got out of Guru's house after midnight, they would have had to do another couple of hours work at the Smile. By helping them -- by easing their burden -- they were able to get another couple of hours sleep and to wake up the next morning a little more rested for another day of service to Guru.

And while it's true, I did worship those guys in the commonsense meaning of that word (those three guys were the best of the best), I didn't worship them, I didn't venerate them. Likewise, they never expected (much less demanded) my help and they were extremely grateful for it.

It's reminiscent of politicians in some respects. Those politicians who seem so hungry for power always give one pause, don't they? The folks who I feel most comfortable giving power to are those who seem least interested in having it. This, of course, was the great attraction of Lavanya. When I was in the Center, one could not help comparing and contrasting the styles of Ranjana and Lavanya.

Where Ranjana was given an increasing authority over a growing number of assistants, Lavanya seemed to reject sycophants. While Ranjana appeared to relish being up front and center, it appeared Lavanya could have done without such trappings. That's not to say that Lavanya was a shrinking violet -- not at all. From the guy's side of the aisle, it just appeared to me that Lavanya -- to use a sporting term -- acted as if she'd been there before. In other words, she was confident in her position and didn't seem to need any outward show of importance.

The point of this post, however, is this: while a large staff is often an important indicator of power and prestige, it can just as often serve to undermine the principal's influence. When the staff's loyalty lies elsewhere, the staff can be used to insulate and control the principal.

Credit for the photo of Ranjana (center) and her devotional singers goes here.

Ranjana

2009-07-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

Back at Guru's memorial, Saraswati said something else to me that stuck with me.

Remember that over the memorial weekend, Saraswati had been trying to enlist my help in getting her nephew, Pinak -- my sister's then-boyfriend -- to come to New York to see Guru one last time.

At some point that weekend, Saraswati had brought the situation to Ranjana's attention. Apparently, there had been some discussion between them about my family: me, my brother Jeevan, and my sister Nirbachita.

In what I then took as a friendly effort to butter me up, Saraswati told me about a part of that discussion. "Ranjana said," Saraswati recounted, "that Guru had told her that there was a strong connection between you and your family and her."

While Saraswati and I didn't dwell on the subject, it did remind me of the fact that I hadn't yet seen Ranjana at the memorial. As it turned out, I never would.

I must have greeted and hugged a dozen or more of my sister disciples over the course of that weekend, including Lavanya, who had been out of the Center for some time by that point, but who nevertheless looked as beautiful as ever dressed in a sari for that somber occasion.

But I never so much as saw Ranjana during the relatively brief periods of time at which former disciples like me were permitted at the tennis court. In my narcissistic way, I wondered to myself whether she was avoiding me.

In any event -- Saraswati's anecdote aside -- I had always felt a connection with Ranjana. As I've already recounted, from my earliest days in the Center, she seemed to have my back.

Later, once I had ensconced myself as a local disciple in New York, I remember being amused at how intimidated most disciples seemed of her. Not surprised, mind you -- she did really have that beautifully severe look of Anjelica Huston in this picture and she had Guru's ear like very few others.

So, I wasn't surprised that disciples -- men and women -- snapped to it when she asked for something to be done. I was amused, though. I would never obey a command from another disciple, and with Ranjana, I had the distinct impression that I wouldn't be expected to.

One of my favorite runs back in the day was the Forrest Park course. Sundar had taught me the seven-mile route that took us from Jamaica to Forrest Hills and then through the park along wooded trails (which woods sometimes revealed the remains of Santeria sacrifices and other times the occasional illicit rendezvous).

The turnaround point was at the intersection of Forrest Park Drive and Woodhaven Boulevard, but just before reaching it -- on the right -- was an all-weather track. And, sometimes, in the summer afternoons, I'd catch Ranjana and Guru alone there working out.

In truth, it was Ranjana who was working out, while Guru -- with stopwatch in hand -- put her through her paces. She was training for Sports Day. It was always fun to unexpectedly run into Guru like that and I got a real kick seeing them.

I remember seeing Guru's back to me one time as he spoke some unheard instructions to Ranjana as I jogged past along Forrest Park Drive. Ranjana, facing in my direction, but still some 50 yards away, recognized me at once and gave me a big wave hello, causing Guru to turn and look, too.

Happy memories.

On the night before I left the Center for good, I carried a large, professionally framed portrait of Guru over to Ranjana's apartment and left it on her doorstep.

I'm sorry I never got to embrace Ranjana at the memorial and tell her how very sorry I was for her loss. Not that she necessarily needed the consolation from me, but it would have been a nice acknowledgement of the natural fondness that I think we both share for each other.

Perhaps that is a moment I can still look forward to.

The classic shot above of Guru and Ranjana at Sports Day was taken by Shraddha Howard. His other fine pictures can be seen here.

Ashrita

2009-07-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the effect of the adrenaline that was about to pump through my system, but I no longer remember why we were in a seedy Queens bowling alley late at night.

Perhaps it was to scope out a location for one of his world records. I just don't recall. Nevertheless, Ashrita and I stood at the bowling alley's front counter -- engulfed in the sour odor of smelly feet emanating from all the used bowling shoes behind the counter -- speaking to the attendant. Well, "speaking" is putting it nicely. In fact, we were arguing.

For some reason, the scumbag behind the counter was giving Ashrita a ration of shit. It quickly devolved into a real confrontation for two reasons. First, the attendant was becoming extremely aggressive. Second, Ashrita -- while not reciprocating the aggression -- was also not intimidated. I stood next to him, ready to rumble and feeling pretty certain it was going to go down that way, but Ashrita was intensely calm.

At one point, when the attendant asked if Ashrita wanted "to take it outside," Ashrita responded by saying "I'm not afraid of you, but I'm not going to fight you either." (I'd only ever heard that line uttered convincingly by one other person: my old pal Charlie.)

Ashrita's self-control gave this guy an out and he seemed relieved that Ashrita hadn't taken him up on the offer to step outside. For the first time, the attendant seemed to notice me. I was standing right next to Ashrita, staring directly at the attendant, adrenaline having already compromised any sense of control I had.

"What are you looking at?" the attendant sneered.

"I don't have any idea," I responded, not breaking my glare. Ashrita then beckoned me away and we left.

I have great respect and admiration for Ashrita. Though we were never destined to be BFFs or engage in a "bromance," we did have a lot in common and I've never met anyone with the kind of conscious mental control over physical and nervous pain and suffering that Ashrita demonstrates on a routine basis.

Like me, Ashrita joined the Center at the ripe old age of 16 (though he's about 11 years older than me and joined the Center in 1970) and he's still there after almost 40 years. Incredible. His name means "protected by God" and Ashrita embraces that meaning like it's some kind of infallible cosmic insurance policy.

I remember one time Guru visited the Rocherolles' place in Stamford, Connecticut, which had a large beautiful yard with a pool and clay tennis court in the backyard. Just beyond the court, however, was a dark pond semi-covered by green moss. When someone asked about it, either Narendra or Durdam replied that it wasn't safe to swim in because it was home to water moccasins. Ashrita overheard the comment and began taking off his shirt as he headed directly for the pond.

The image of Ashrita smilingly emerging from the pond covered in green pond scum is still emblazoned on my mind's eye. Today, when I think of Ashrita -- and the role he might play in the Center of the future -- I'm reminded of Swami Vivekananda.

I'm reminded of Swami Vivekananda's courage. Swamiji had the courage to apply what his own master -- Sri Ramakrishna -- had revealed to him in a way that Sri Ramakrishna himself likely would not have approved of had the master still been alive.

For Ramakrishna's closest disciples, his message could not have been clearer: renounce the world. Give up -- forever -- "women and gold," which words to Thakur were synonymous with "lust and greed." Philanthropy? Service to the world? Thakur saw such endeavors as a vehicle for the aggrandizement of the giver's ego. Such work bound one to the world and was to be rejected.

There was nothing particularly ambiguous about Sri Ramakrishna's thinking on these points.

Nevertheless, within about 10 years after his master's passing, Swamiji -- fresh from his first tour of the world -- organized and established the Ramakrishna Math, dedicated to the twin ideals of self-realization and service to the world. Swamiji's efforts weren't without controversy.

Swamiji's gurubhais weren't pushovers. They weren't necessarily going to fall in line just because Naren said so. They had lived with Ramakrishna, too, and some of them couldn't square a mission of service to the world with Thakur's express words to the contrary. In the end, though, Vivekananda's will prevailed for two reasons: he won the confidence of his brother disciples and, critically, he had confidence in himself.

If the Center is to move forward in the wake of Guru's death, and do so with any relevance in the world, it must embrace a mission of selfless service to the world. To do so, however, will require the leadership of a modern Swami Vivekananda -- someone within the Center who can win both the respect and confidence of his (or her) brother and sister disciples, but also have the kind of supreme confidence in himself (or herself) to move the Center in a direction that Guru himself never would have.

I can't think of anyone other than Ashrita who could meet those two criteria.

Where could he take the Center? What distant land desperately in need of service could challenge Ashrita in the way that America challenged Swami Vivekananda?

Africa.

Now, I acknowledge the impropriety of laying down a challenge for Ashrita that I myself have not the courage to try. But I'm going to do so anyway.

For ideas, why not start with the United Nations Messengers of Peace program or consider becoming a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador for one of these fine programs?

Or coming up with something really audacious. How about spending some time with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and see if there's a way to act in conjunction with one of its many projects in Africa? Can you imagine the impact a tailored world record attempt in Africa tied in some way to one of these aid or development programs could have?

Not for Guru or the Center, but for the people of Africa.

Ultimately, that was the great genius of Swami Vivekananda. He was confident -- not in his own personality, but in the knowledge that his efforts were the efforts of his master. For that reason, he needn't sing the praises of Sri Ramakrishna on his travels through the world (nor need he feel guilty for not doing so). It was enough to serve and inspire.

That's what he was born to do.

The nice shot of Ashrita above is by Damon Winter of the New York Times. It originally accompanied this article by Corey Kilgannon.

Ashrita's own blog can be found here. His Wikipedia entry can be found here.

Cartwheels in a Sari (Part Three)

2009-07-18T17:20:00.000-07:00

While Jayanti's book is ostensibly about "growing up cult," it's also at least as much about how difficult it is to leave the Center.

Which leads me to write about another unconventional theory of mine: that implicit in joining the Center -- or any other spiritual path -- is the notion that some day, you should leave it.

When you think about it, this notion doesn't sound as if it should be controversial. Would you, for example, go to college intending to remain a perpetual student with no intent to ever graduate? No doubt, there are some people who do that very thing, but I think we can safely say that they are the exceptions to the rule. College is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The same is true of the Center. The goal of discipleship isn't to be a disciple (or at least it shouldn't be). The goal is to be a master, by which I mean the goal is to become a person who has developed some sense of mastery over oneself (and not necessarily a spiritual master with disciples of one's own).

Despite their similarities, the path of yoga is not as apparently formulaic as college. One doesn't join the Center with a class schedule and firm end date in hand. Likewise, on the path, one cannot easily compare one's progress to the other students (at least not accurately). People that join the Center after you may, in fact, be "ahead" of you in class. Making things even more obscure, you yourself may not have a true sense of how close or how far you are from graduation.

Nevertheless, I think we can say that if your goal in treading the path of yoga can be defined even loosely as gaining self-mastery, then a fundamental prerequisite must be the weaning of the disciple from the master. Mustn't it?

Unless I'm wrong about this -- "and I'm never wrong" -- a question that next arises is this: why did Guru make it so hard to leave? In other words, if at some point in one's personal development one must wean oneself from one's guru, then why did Guru do everything in his power to dissuade disciples from leaving? (Just for the moment, let's leave aside those disciples that Guru actually kicked out of the Center.)

Let's face it, as Jayanti so eloquently documents in Cartwheels, Guru stacked the deck against those of us who considered voluntarily leaving the Center. First, there was the promise of becoming persona non grata -- we'd lose contact with most, if not all, of our friends. Second, and far more intimidating, was the specter of cosmic retribution -- one's own soul, Guru often said, would punish you for leaving the Center.

All things considered, one would be hard pressed to argue that Guru actually wanted his disciples to leave. That, however, is exactly what I'm suggesting. Making it hard for disciples to do so was an integral part of the process.

Remember what process we're discussing here. We're not discussing any vague metaphysical concept like "God Realization" or "samadhi." Instead, we're discussing what I think we can agree would be -- or should be -- a practical, tangible, easily identifiable prerequisite to any such "mystical" enlightenment. That is: becoming independent, learning to stand on one's own, learning to make decisions for oneself without leaning on Guru for support.

In other words, you're not likely to realize God if you haven't even got the strength to make day-to-day decisions for yourself.

If that is indeed the process -- that eventually one must wean oneself away from one's guru -- then Guru's behavior in this regard might make sense. Consider an alternative. What might have happened had Guru acted in a more humane way when a disciple approached him about leaving? What if Guru had had an open door policy for ex-disciples, where they could have come and gone as they pleased, with no negative consequences?

In fact, what if Guru had actually made it easy to leave, encouraging disciples to experiment with branching out on their own, with the promise that they could always return to the "nest," they could always return to the safety and security of the Center if things didn't work out?

Had that been true, the Center -- to be sure -- would have been a nicer place. There's no doubt about that.

It also might have fostered a kind of spiritual codependency, which in the long term could have undermined -- or at best slowed -- the very process of becoming spiritually self-reliant that is prerequisite to any sense of "enlightenment" worth having in the first place.

Like it or not, Guru's way put a premium on becoming truly independent, because it was the only way one could voluntarily leave him.

I hearken back to my own internal struggle to leave. At its height, my choice -- as I saw it then -- was a stark one. I could remain in the Center -- the "golden boat" as Guru called it -- and be unhappy (to put it mildly). Or I could leave the Center and face retribution from my own soul in the form of some affliction like cancer. That's honestly how I conceived my options at the time: unhappiness or death.

I chose death. Not that I was sure that I was facing death, but I thought it a possibility. I remember literally telling myself -- out loud -- that I'd rather leave the Center and die than remain a disciple any longer. From that stroke of independence, everything else followed for me (although it came in fits and starts). In the end, I was able to leave on my own terms.

Not everyone, however, had the same experience. It's difficult, for example, to imagine any disciple trying to break free of the Center who faced a more challenging set of circumstances than Jayanti. Jayanti wasn't just faced with losing friends, she faced losing her family. And Guru wasn't just a guru she had picked out of the spiritual marketplace as most of us did. In a very real way, Guru was Jayanti's father figure, the source of her identity, the center of her life -- for her whole life. She knew very little else.

Nevertheless, she was driven to choose death, too. Literally running to the local subway station with the intent to throw herself in front of a moving train, only an observant stranger pulled Jayanti back from the precipice. Then, Guru kicked Jayanti out of the Center himself. "His freeing me was his greatest unwitting act of compassion," she writes.

I realize that most of you -- my readers -- may scoff at this notion that Guru secretly wanted his disciples to grow and become independent, while all the time engaging in behavior meant to keep the disciples down and subservient. Let me, however, leave you with one final thought: Guru knew from his own personal experience how scary (and how liberating) it was to leave one's spiritual community and the concomitant boost to one's independence and self-confidence that results with such a break.

Ironically -- or not -- Guru himself left the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, which had many of the same superstitions about leaving its protective environs as the Center later had. It's also no secret that Guru left the Ashram without permission of the Mother, that there was some bad blood as a result, and that Guru left behind family members.

On top of it all, Guru left the Ashram with a woman!

It must have been a scary time for him, and yet in spite of it all, Guru stepped out from the mighty shadow of Sri Aurobindo and became an independent man.

In the video above, two great friends passing in time. Nadira, just starting her journey. Sudhir, approaching the end of his. July 2008.

Cartwheels in a Sari (Part Two)

2009-07-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

For those of my friends – inside and outside the Center – who are worried about the effect Jayanti’s book might have on Guru’s legacy, the most disconcerting allegations are those of Guru’s meddling in the affairs of parent and child.

Up front, I think we must acknowledge that such meddling would not have been possible save for the acquiescence of the parents themselves.

Parents in the Center were not required to offer up their children to be raised by Guru. Nor do I think it’s fair to say that they were even encouraged to do so. (To be clear, Cartwheels makes no such claim.) And, as a matter of fact, most parents did not relinquish control of their children to Guru.

In this respect, the Rocherolle family is a good example. While there were many differences between them, the Rocherolles, like Jayanti’s family -- the Tamms -- lived in Connecticut, had two children about the same ages as Ketan and Jayanti, and were in the Center throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

Yet, the Rocherolles -- like most parents in the Center -- never relinquished control of their children’s upbringing to Guru. While I suspect that, from time to time, they may have consulted Guru, they never abdicated their role as parents. Unlike Jayanti, Narendra and Durdam had regular christian first names (in addition to their spiritual names), were encouraged by their parents to go to school and do well, and -- perhaps most importantly -- were allowed to fit in with the wider world. They had friends at school and played sports. They were, in effect, normal kids whose religion happened to be different from the other kids.

Although Gayatri and Gangadar -- Narendra’s and Durdam’s mom and dad -- did the right thing, that’s not to say that they paid no price. Within that small, insular world of disciples who lived for Guru -- who made not even the smallest of decisions without his approval -- the Rocherolles had less prestige than the Tamms.

As Jayanti’s book illustrates so well, however, that idea -- that there was ever any value in one’s social standing within the Center -- seems laughable now. Back then, however, it meant the world to some disciples, including Samarpana and Rudra, Jayanti’s mom and dad. Having already relinquished decision making authority over their own lives, sadly it only made sense to them at that time to relinquish that same authority over the lives of their children.

While ultimately it was the parents who ceded to Guru authority over their children -- which they were neither asked nor required to do -- some of Guru’s behavior was, nevertheless, indefensible.

For me, the most heartwrenching anecdote of Cartwheels was that of “Tashvi,” the young former disciple girl whom Jayanti met up with at a Manhattan nightclub. According to the book, Tashvi’s father had passed away and Guru had blamed his fatal illness on Tashvi’s disobedience. It’s difficult for me to conceive of a more despicable thing to tell a young girl in the wake of her father’s death.

It’s so despicable that one is tempted to disbelieve the anecdote, to cry “hearsay” if not heresy. Unfortunately, the tale rings true to my ear. Though I hadn’t heard “Tashvi’s” story before, I have heard plenty of other first person accounts about behavior by Guru that was only slightly less mean spirited. And I know, from my own experience, that Guru had a penchant for blaming the innocent.

As I wrote before, Guru had warned Jayanti and me about being “too friendly” when we had done nothing wrong. Worse still, when I eventually left the Center of my own accord, Guru blamed my brother, Jeevan. He called Jeevan to the back of Annam Brahma, where he had a heated tent set up, and read Jeevan the riot act.

The perplexing question is why did Guru act that way?

Why was he mean? I’m not asking about tough love. I’m not talking about times when Guru ruthlessly ripped into one of his personal attendants who screwed something up (like when I forgot to bring his favored cello bow to a concert). I’m talking about being mean. What possible motive could Guru have had for telling “Tashvi” that she was the reason that her father died?

Perhaps the beginning of an explanation -- not a justification -- can be found in Guru’s own upbringing. Guru was born and raised in what is now Bangladesh. His parents died when he was a young child. All of a sudden, he found himself on the other end of the continent, being raised in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (which would later serve as the organizational model for the Center). While Guru’s upbringing in the ashram could be described in many ways, “emotionally warm” probably wouldn’t be one of them.

I don’t think it’s implausible to conclude that Guru thought -- based upon his own experience -- that when it came to the spiritual life, parents were dispensable.

In fact, looking backward, Guru certainly could have concluded that had it not been for his parents’ premature deaths, he would not have entered the ashram at the young age he had (if at all). Having overcome so much grief at such a young age, it’s conceivable to me that Guru -- like many who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps -- was less sympathetic or at least not indulgent of others in similar positions. "I did it. So can you."

Maybe Guru told “Tashvi” what he himself felt as a little boy -- that he was somehow responsible for the death of his own parents. (Perhaps, cruelly, someone told Guru that very same thing when he was a boy.) Maybe Guru felt Tashvi would react to such feelings in the same way that he himself had -- with gusto for the sheltered and comforting life of the ashram. But, the fact is, we’ll never know.

Psychobabble aside, we’ll never know what motivated Guru to be so mean at times or what intent -- if any -- lay behind such incidents. We can know with certainty the effect such incidents had on the disciples subjected to them. Obviously, Guru’s meanness pushed the disciple subjected to it away.

In this regard, we may infer some intent. In the law -- where the concept of proving intent has been a subject of study and practice for centuries -- it is often said that “one intends the natural and probable consequences of one’s actions.” In other words, we all know that shooting a gun into a crowd is likely to injure someone. So, if you shoot a gun into a crowd, we can logically infer that you intended to hurt someone.

Using the same logic, I think it’s worth exploring the idea that Guru intended to drive some disciples away. The “natural and probable consequences” of treating someone badly is that that person will grow to dislike you, will strive to distance themselves from you. It seems likely that -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- Guru intended the victims of his nastiness to distance themselves from him, be it physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

There are, of course, other explanations. When I called Jeevan today to ask him how he had reacted when Guru told him that he was at least in part responsible for me leaving the Center -- a preposterous claim on its face -- Jeevan responded in the way that only he can. “Guru was a Virgo,” Jeevan exclaimed. Never having learned much about astrology, I asked him to elaborate. “Virgo males are assholes sometimes,” Jeevan explained. As a consequence, he never took Guru’s assertion of blame personally.

Whatever the explanation for Guru’s meanness, the ethical case against what he said to “Tashvi” and others like her is unassailable. Guru was wrong to say such a thing to her -- or more likely, to have either leaked such rumor to others or to have had Ashrita deliver the message to her directly -- and I regret that there was nobody there to stand up for Tashvi at the time, which leads me to a final thought.

Where would the world be if people simply refused to follow unethical orders?

I remember long ago being asked by a non-disciple family member what I would do if Guru asked me to kill my own mother. It’s the kind of asshat hypothetical question that cult members typically faced from family members, particularly in the post-Jonestown era. My tact was always to fight the question and refuse to answer. “Guru would never ask me to do such a thing, that’s preposterous,” I’d honestly and rightly shoot back. The fact that Guru wouldn’t have asked such a thing (and he would not have) is beside the point though.

The true answer -- and I wished I had answered it this way back in the day -- is that if Guru had asked me such a thing, I would have told him to fuck off. Then, I would have reported the incident to the police. I honestly think that is what Guru was looking for all along from his disciples, that spirit of independence and willingness to make a stand, even if it meant standing alone.

I like to think that deep down it would have thrilled Guru to no end if, on that day near the end of Cartwheels in a Sari -- when Guru no doubt instructed Ashrita (a.k.a. "Romesh") to tell Samarpana to kick her own daughter out of the house -- Ashrita had simply refused to carry the message. “Guru, that’s a message I’m not going to deliver,” Ashrita might have said.

Sure, the result of such disobedience would have been predictable. A tongue lashing, perhaps, and immediate expulsion from the Center. But what a graduation from the Center! And how proud I'd like to think Guru would have been -- and rightly so -- for having produced such a strong and independent character to unleash upon the world.

Once the disciple is willing to stand on principle, even in the face of his guru's disapproval, the days of discipleship are over.

If you think I'm wrong about this, borrow a page from our christian friends and ask: "W.W.V.D.?" What would Vivekananda do if Sri Ramakrishna had asked him to tell a mother to evict her own daughter?

The question answers itself.

Credit of the photo of Guru and Jayanti above goes to Jayanti's dad, Rudra, and is found here, with many other interesting photos of Jayanti and her family.

Cartwheels in a Sari (Part One)

2009-07-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

Ours wasn't the only family drama quietly playing itself out behind the scenes of Guru's memorial.

Like Saraswati, my old friend Ketan was also grappling with the possibility that his own family members would not attend Guru's memorial services that weekend. In Ketan's case, however, there was no possibility that his mother or sister would make an appearance.

On October 11 -- the very day Guru passed away -- Ketan's sister, Jayanti, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Still in the hospital with her husband and mom by her side, Jayanti wasn't going anywhere.

I'm not sure Jayanti would have been inclined to attend Guru's memorial services in any event. In the years since she had left the Center, Jayanti had gone to college and graduate school, become a writing professor, and started a family of her own.

She had also signed a book deal with Random House. Jayanti had written a memoir about growing up in the Sri Chinmoy Center.

Though it wouldn't hit store shelves for another year and a half, the very idea of Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult made some disciples understandably nervous. Ever since a disaffected disciple first went online and started a message board critical of Guru, the Center had been playing defense. As my fictional friend Eugene Struthers might say, however, Jayanti's memoir promised to take such criticism to a "whole ... nutha ... level."

As I later told Ketan, the best defense is a good offense. If the Center wanted to have some control over the public narrative, it had to avoid the impulse to attack Jayanti's book and instead open up and begin competing in the "marketplace of ideas." As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once wrote: "[T]he best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market[.]"

While I sympathized with Ketan's predicament -- being apprehensive about what his sister might say about Guru, the Center, and about him personally -- I was nonetheless genuinely excited for Jayanti and eager to read the manuscript. Nothing doing. Only one person I am aware of had that honor: our mutual friend Sudhir, who was near the end of his long battle with cancer. (My previous posts on Sudhir are here and here.)

After reading the manuscript, Sudhir gave it a thumbs-up. Now, after having read the book itself (twice), I wholeheartedly agree. Jayanti has written a moving memoir of what it was like for her to not only grow up in the Sri Chinmoy Center, but also to have done so owing her entire identity to Guru (due in large part to her own parents' almost complete abdication of their parental roles).

Superficially, it was simply interesting to read about Jayanti's life. I met her for the first time when she was in her early teens and knew nothing of her upbringing, aspirations, or troubles. To me, she was just one of those blessed kids to have been brought up in the Center, having had been spared the pains and indignities of the world.

And although I'm not a big fan of the name changes and purposeful mis-descriptions that the publisher apparently required in Cartwheels -- I suppose we have the lawyers to blame for that -- I did enjoy trying to identify each and every one of them. Prema and Isha, of course, were the easy ones. (Here are my guesses to a few of the more obvious other ones: Romesh, Mayar, and Uttam.)

And, because Jayanti's life in the Center both preceded (the 1970s) and succeeded (the 1990s) my own tenure in the Center (1981 to 1990), it was also interesting to read about some of the organizational history and happenings, some of which I had heard about before and some of which I hadn't.

Those superficial joys aside, though, Cartwheels in a Sari is heartwrenching. I'm no book reviewer and based on my personal affection for Jayanti (and her mom, Samarpana), I doubt I could ever be truly objective (try as I might) about her book. Nevertheless, over the next couple of posts, I'd like to address -- in a free associative way -- some of the issues that came to my mind as I read Jayanti's fine memoir.

First and foremost, Cartwheels left me feeling sad. The revelation of Jayanti's near suicide -- that she was in so much pain, that she had nobody to talk to -- saddened me terribly.

There are many differences between Jayanti and me when it comes to our respective experiences in the Center. The single most important difference between us is that I volunteered for the Center; as a teen, driven by a combination of my own demons and an innate sense of some deeper possibilities, I studied the yoga philosophy of India, looked for a guru, and consciously chose Guru without any outside compulsion.

Jayanti had no choice.

While I had largely been left unattended in the wake of my parents' divorce, growing up on junk food and TV -- and eventually moving on to become a marijuana and alcohol prodigy -- Jayanti's parents wrapped her in a cocoon of Center lore and ignorance of the world around her.

She was allowed to watch just two television shows as a young girl, and even then she couldn't do so without taint; one wonders what possible good Jayanti's dad -- Rudra -- thought would come of telling his daughter that little Laura Ingalls (in the old Little House on the Prairie series) and her family indeed did have a guru, just as Jayanti had, but that he only showed up in other episodes.

I cringed with heartbreaking embarrassment reading about little Jayanti being sent off to a public kindergarten in a sari. True, as a new disciple at the age of 16, I wore my "whites" -- the white shirt and pants that were de rigueur for male disciples at Center meditation meetings -- to high school, but I had done so consciously, much to my own father's chagrin.

The differences between Jayanti and me (and most other disciples) are even more striking though. Guru became Jayanti's de facto father. Unwilling to make even the simplest of decisions about the upbringing, well being, or future of their children, Guru played that role for Jayanti's mom and dad. From the beginning of her life, Jayanti was raised to see Guru -- and Guru alone -- as the center of power, as the decider, as the one whose opinion mattered on all things great and small.

If Jayanti wanted her father's attention -- as all children do of necessity -- she sought it from Guru. That's what she was taught to do. At its simplest level -- represented by her very name -- Guru was responsible for Jayanti's identity. This stuff was completely off my radar screen when I first became acquainted with her. Even when some disciples suspected -- and told Guru -- that Jayanti and I were becoming "too friendly," these massive differences between us never occurred to me.

The fact that, in the end, Guru would turn his back on Jayanti -- whatever her supposed sins -- is heartbreaking.

Zero Sum Game

2009-06-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, many small businesses in New York failed, including The Blue Lotus. It hadn't helped any that Guru refused to visit the store himself, declared he'd never give the place a spiritual name, and forbade his close female disciples from patronizing it.

Nirbachita had sunk what for a disciple was a fortune in inheritance to start up the beautiful little cafe in the upscale Queens neighborhood of Forest Hills. The one-two punch of the economic downturn and Guru's lack of support (to put it nicely) destroyed any chance for success The Blue Lotus may have had.

That's not to say that there weren't disciples who supported Nirbachita and her cafe. There were. A handful of guys and gals helped her build and stock the cafe, and supported it throughout. Among them was Pinak.

From his station at Guru Health Foods -- where he was then acting as a day-to-day manager -- Pinak ordered supplies and called regularly to offer his help and support at a time when Nirbachita needed it the most. Not surprisingly, a friendship developed between them. By late 2001, Nirbachita had left the Center and decided to drive back to California to start life anew.

Pinak decided to join her.

For the next six years, Nirbachita and Pinak lived together, eventually settling in Puerto Rico where they opened a health food store together (and where Nirbachita was the president and driving force behind Amigos de los Animales, the best organized animal welfare nonprofit on the island). The story of their treatment by the Center during that time period is theirs to tell. Suffice to say that it wasn't positive and that Nirbachita was blamed for "luring" Pinak away.

That meme was ridiculous and ultimately counterproductive. So, it was no big surprise to me that neither Nirbachita nor Pinak expressed any interest in attending Guru's memorial services.

Pinak's absence, however, seemed incomprehensible to those of his family who were in the Center and in New York at that time. As I've noted before, it appeared to me that many of the disciples considered appearance at the memorial services a loyalty test for those of us no longer in the Center. Guru had been under increasing scrutiny in the years preceding his death, and I think some of the disciples rightly saw our presence at the memorial as a show of public support.

That's why Saraswati approached us on our first night in New York.

At Guru's memorial services, "friends of the Center" -- ex-disciples like me and Jeevan and Guru's other non-disciple well wishers -- had been invited to walk past Guru's open casket at designated times over the weekend, once during the day and once during the night. At those times, the two long lines of disciples -- one line for girls, a separate one for boys -- came to a standstill for us. (Here's a picture courtesy of the Times.)

It was a very classy thing to do -- allowing "outsiders" in. I can't think of how the weekend could have been carried out with any more grace than it had been. It was an auspicious start for a new era of the Center.

After our first walk past Guru, Jeevan and I lingered on the driveway just outside the tennis court mingling with our many old "brat pack" friends still in the Center (some of them seen here in younger days). Despite the circumstances, the mood was often joyous as we shared old stories and laughed in remembrance. Identifying with the disciples' new found circumstances, I remember looking around at them all -- everyone in white -- and thinking what an interesting time for them.

They had nobody to tell them what to do anymore. How frightening. How liberating.

It was there -- outside the tennis court -- that Saraswati and her two sisters (whom Sudhir wickedly referred to as "Patty and Selma") approached me and Jeevan. Operating on the mistaken premise that our sister was preventing Pinak from making the pilgrimage to New York, they hoped that we might intercede and persuade Nirbachita to let Pinak come see Guru one last time.

We spoke for just a few minutes that first night. It was bit awkward. I sensed -- perhaps wrongly -- that Saraswati felt a little sheepish approaching us with such a request. I told her that I doubted Nirbachita was the reason Pinak was reluctant to come to New York, but that I'd nevertheless be glad to call and find out.

As it turned out, Nirbachita had actually been urging Pinak to make the trip. I don't know why he was reluctant. I hadn't spoken to him. I suspect part of it was Pinak's natural loyalty. He sensed -- rightly, I think -- that there had always been a subtle effort by Guru, by some disciples, by his aunts, to drive a wedge between himself and Nirbachita. They dearly wanted Pinak back in the Center. Those efforts, however, weren't appreciated. I think Pinak probably felt that giving into these pressures would be a sign of disloyalty towards Nirbachita.

Whatever the case, Nirbachita wasn't to blame for Pinak's hesitancy and I told Saraswati so the following night. We were again on the driveway of the tennis court, but this time it was just the two of us. Saraswati was at times demure, direct, flattering, and evasive. For what must have been an hour or more, we stood off to the side of the other disciples who were milling around and negotiated our positions like seasoned diplomats.

Her position was simple and earnest. She wanted Pinak to see Guru one more time. My position was that I wanted Saraswati and her family to treat Nirbachita with respect. In the midst of our discussions, I noticed that we were attracting the attention of some of the disciple passerby.

In fact, one young woman disciple I had known for some time named Suchatala came over to where we were standing. She stood patiently by for a pause in our conversation and then interjected. "I just want you to know that if it weren't for Yogaloy, I wouldn't be in the Center," she said to Saraswati. It was a nice gesture and I appreciate it. With that, Suchatala walked away.

I concluded by telling Saraswati that our two families could not be like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It was incumbent upon the two of us to do our part to bring our families together. I had high hopes, I only half-joked, that if Nirbachita and Pinak ever got married that the two of us might share a dance at the wedding. (Saraswati had no response to that feeble jest; all I heard were crickets.)

In the end, though, Pinak made a last trip to New York.

Photo credit above goes to Prashphutita, whose other nice shots can be seen here.

The Golden Boy

2009-06-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

Where to begin?

Perhaps, as Joan Didion did with such great effect in her wonderful book The Year of Magical Thinking, I should start over again at the beginning of this memoir and start peeling away another layer of the proverbial onion.

For me, this memoir began with Guru’s death on October 11, 2007. I’ve already recounted my initial reaction to that news and my subsequent trip to New York in the ensuing days with my brother, Jeevan. I didn’t report everything that happened on that trip though. There was a minor to-do about the fact that my sister’s boyfriend didn’t make the trip to see Guru one last time.

I didn’t report that part of the story in my earlier posts because it just didn’t seem relevant to my story at the time I was writing. Now, though, I think it might be a good jumping off point.

My sister – Nirbachita – didn’t attend Guru’s memorial services. And why should she have? Guru had treated her like shit. (I addressed some of these issues here and here.) At the time of Guru’s death, though, she was living in Puerto Rico with her boyfriend, Pinak. This fact was a source of long-standing drama within certain well-placed circles in orbit around Guru.

A native of Puerto Rico, Pinak was raised in the shadow of the Center. His uncles and aunts were in the Center. Especially aunts. Doting aunts. And one in particular had risen to prominence within the Center’s status conscious hierarchy – Saraswati.

As was true with almost all the girls in the Center, I only knew Saraswati by appearance. She’s strikingly beautiful – in my imagination, her celebrity lookalike is a svelte Salma Hayek in a sari. More than anything, though, it was her job that gave her prominence and influence within the Center. She was – and is – Alo Devi’s personal assistant. Along with her male counterpart – Savyasachi – Saraswati travelled with Alo night and day, around the globe, for decades.

The importance of Saraswati’s service to Guru in this respect cannot be underestimated. Frankly, Guru wanted to maximize the time Alo spent away from the Center’s headquarters in Jamaica, New York. This was accomplished, in part, by having Alo scout out new locales as possible winter vacation spots for Guru and the rest of the disciples at the end of each year. Saraswati (and Savyasachi) made that possible. But I digress.

Suffice to say, Saraswati had Guru’s confidence in a way that very few others ever had. She’s smart, capable, and perhaps most importantly, she’s discreet.

Saraswati also had Guru’s ear. As I wrote about in my own case, having a high-placed advocate who could, on occasion, direct Guru’s attention towards you was a fast way to, well, get attention from Guru (which was, in turn, the source of all status in the Center). Saraswati was such an advocate for Pinak.

Pinak was the golden boy. He came to the Center while still a teen and quickly found himself living in New York. I first met him at Guru Health Foods, where he worked assisting Ashrita, the store’s manager. Ashrita’s primary job, however, was that of Guru’s messenger or emissary. He was, among other things, the official mode of verbal communication of personal messages from disciples to Guru and vice versa.

Most disciples, you see, did not speak to Guru directly – nor did he often speak to them. Disciples could always write Guru letters, but he didn’t typically respond in kind. So, for most disciples, if they had urgent news or an important question that needed an answer, they called Ashrita. Likewise, when Guru needed a message delivered, he often used Ashrita to deliver it.

Many of these telephonic communications passed through the health food store. For many years, there was a phone in the back room that only Guru called. When it rang, Ashrita would rush back to answer it, pulling an ever present list out of his pocket containing questions, answers, and issues to run past Guru. This is the environment in which Pinak cut his teeth.

Pinak – like his aunt Saraswati– is capable and discreet. During his tenure at Guru Health Foods, the store expanded and thrived, as did his status within the Center.

Then, one day, he fell in love with my sister.

That's Pinak, above, as he appears today. What a great guy. He's like part of the family.

More to Discuss

2009-06-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

I'm deeply ambivalent about re-opening the blog. A recent revelation, however, compels it.

A female disciple -- a woman I know, trust, and whom I was indirectly responsible for bringing to the Center in the first place -- has reported that Guru pressed her into engaging in sex acts with another disciple. This is a shame.

Before I write anything further, though, I want to first say how deeply impressed I am of my friend (who still remains publicly nameless). As I told her personally, I'm very proud of her and the strength of character she has demonstrated by telling her story (and allowing my sister to publish it).

I see this new series of posts as an opportunity to explore some important issues that I had planned on addressing in the blog the first time around, but for reasons I'll address later, I did not.

I expect that some -- if not all -- of these posts will disappoint some of my readers, including some whom I consider friends. For this I am sorry.

Photo credit to James Jordan on Flickr.

Epilogue -- My Hopes for the Center

2009-02-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

Swami Vivekananda was nothing if not decisive.

When invited to make the journey to Chicago to attend the Parliament of Religions, however, the wandering sadhu and heir to Sri Ramakrishna wavered. How could he go? His master had relentlessly driven home the message of renunciation. A true aspirant was to shun the world, shun women and gold, shun fame and philanthropy.

For six years after Thakur’s death, that’s exactly what Swamiji had done -- and yet.

Accepting the trip to America felt right. Finding himself on the southern coast of India at the time, Naren decided to swim out to a nearby rock and meditate. ("Vivekananda Rock" as it is known and appears today is pictured above.) Afterwards, mustering the kind of self-confidence that his brother disciples were not yet capable of, Swami Vivekananda accepted the invitation and opened the West to yoga.

Now, more than a century later, it is time for Sri Chinmoy’s disciples to take up the mantle of Swamiji’s boldness. In this respect, I have three broad hopes for the Center as it moves forward without Guru's direct leadership. First, that the Center adopt a bold mission of selfless service to the wider world. Second, that it provide long-term health care to those hundreds of disciples who have given their lives to Guru and now find themselves without health insurance and growing older. Third, and finally, that the Center operate with complete transparency.

Years ago, my brother Jeevan said something to me in the frank manner for which he is known. We were talking about the Center and I had mentioned to him something I had read. To honor a recent accomplishment of Guru's, a group of disciples had made 27,000 snowballs.

"They should have collected 27,000 blankets for the homeless," Jeevan noted dryly.

I've never forgotten that comment.

While such childlike tributes served a purpose while Guru lived, their time has now passed. Now is the time for the Center as an organization to commit itself to selfless service to humanity -- locally, nationally, and internationally.

I'm sure this suggestion may meet with some resistance. Guru wasn't particularly enthusiastic about philanthropy. The same was true of Sri Ramakrishna. Only after Thakur passed away did his disciples embrace service to the world, and then only with the bold leadership of Swamiji (Vivekananda) and Maharaj (Brahmananda).

At the time, a number of Sri Ramakrishna's other direct disciples weren't so keen on the idea. Thankfully, Swami Vivekananda's spirit prevailed. In the years following, when cholera broke out somewhere, the second generation of the Ramakrishna Order -- the ochre-clad disciples of Swamiji and Maharaj -- were some of the very first headed into the afflicted villages (while most other people wanted out of such villages).

Swami Vivekananda and his brothers knew instinctively that if Ramakrishna's disciples weren't brave enough to face such troubles, then nobody would be. Aren't Sri Chinmoy's disciples cast from the same mold?

As a former disciple -- as someone who wants to see the Center succeed in the future -- I think the Center needs to have a mission of selfless service to the world. I won't go so far as to suggest what that mission of service should look like. (Frankly, I'm probably overstepping my prerogative with this post already.)

I will go so far as to say, however, that the Center is uniquely qualified to engage in such activity. It has worldwide reach, enthusiastic manpower, and know-how. From successfully planning and staging the World Harmony Run to putting on multi-day endurance events, to astounding feats of individual endurance and perseverance, it's difficult to imagine any other single group of individuals more fit to serve the world.

Now is the time.

My second hope for the Center is that it take care of its own, that it provide comprehensive health care to all those disciples who have given their lives to Guru for any appreciable amount of time and now find themselves without health insurance.

I would hazard that there are probably less than a few hundred of these, maybe far less. Most such disciples probably live in the United States, which doesn't take care of its citizens' health care needs in the same way that other, more civilized, nations do. Nevertheless, not even a single disciple who has given their life to Guru should suffer in old age.

My dear friend Sudhir was lucky. He worked for Victory-Factory, one of the few disciple-run businesses that provided such benefits to its employees. Even so, in the end, an inordinate amount of Sudhir's care fell to former disciples. (I shudder to think how Sudhir might have suffered without the constant love, devotion and sacrifice shown by Samarpana and Harsha.) I fear not all disciples will be so lucky.

The Center should begin to address this issue immediately.

My final hope -- and probably the most important -- is that the Center operate with absolute transparency. As someone who is regularly brought in in my professional capacity to sort things out (when it is way too late), I can't stress enough how important transparency is for the long-term health of any organization.

Despite its fundamental importance, I suspect this will be the biggest challenge for those currently making decisions about the Center's future direction. I'm not being critical -- it's only natural. At issue is control of the future of an organization that was (and is) the life blood of hundreds, if not thousands, of disciples.

Nevertheless, attention must be paid to the seemingly mundane issues of organization and management if the Center is to fulfill the legacy Guru has left it. It is in dealing with these issues that a spirit of openness and transparency are so important.

Apparently, the Center's official name is the Sri Chinmoy Society, Inc., according to its corporate not-for-profit listing with the New York Secretary of State. When it comes to corporate entities, transparency starts with understanding how such organizations work. I'm no expert on such things -- and I'm not a New York lawyer -- but here's a primer on how such organizations work generally.

Corporations are controlled by their owners. While the owners of a for-profit company are usually its shareholders, the owners of a not-for-profit company are typically its members. In this case, that probably means the disciples. Ownership is exercised in a representative way, much like a representative democracy. Having a thousand decision makers, for example, would make the act of governance impossible, so the members instead elect representatives.

Those representatives are usually called directors and, once elected, they make up the Board of Directors. The board -- typically made up of an odd number of directors -- make all of the most important decisions about the not-for-profit company by voting (hence the odd number of directors, which prevents a tie vote or "deadlock"). To manage the organization on a day-to-day basis, the Board of Directors often hires officers, like a president or general manager, a secretary, a treasurer, and others as needed.

At the best run organizations, the Board of Directors make such decisions at regularly scheduled board meetings, which are open to all members to observe. Records of such meetings ("minutes") are kept of exactly what took place and are then distributed to the organization's entire membership (oftentimes through a newsletter or member website).

The rules of the road for any particular organization are usually called the by-laws. Organizations must generally make the by-laws (and other corporate records) available to all members upon request.

The by-laws are critical. They identify, among many other things, how members become members, when and how often elections are to be held to choose the directors, how many directors there are to be, how often the board meets, and all of the other procedural details necessary to organize and run the corporate entity.

It is when the by-laws are not followed -- when those who are in de facto control of an organization and don't want to lose such control -- that trouble typically arises. Transparency -- openness about both the organization's assets and management -- is the preventative vaccine for such problems. Without a basic understanding of how the corporate entity is organized and the rules by which it is managed, the individual member-owners lose control.

I'm no longer privy to what goes on in the Center, but as a well-wisher, I worry about the apparent lack of transparency since Guru's death almost a year and a half ago. It's just little things. Like the fact that the only public account of Guru's passing is my recollection of Sahishnu's account. As a blogger, I'm thrilled. It drives traffic to this site. But it's sad, really.

Then there is the fact that Guru's will -- a document publicly filed in the Queens County Probate Court (but not so easily obtained) -- is only available on an anti-cult website. There's no good excuse for this. Certainly, Guru's passing was a cause for great mourning. And I can understand how some people might genuinely feel that it's morbid to want to think about such things -- that it's better to keep such things away from view.

Understandable, but wrong. It's difficult to deal with the death of a loved one, but the difficulties are multiplied if not addressed in a straightforward and professional way. It's time for all disciples to take up the reins of the organization and steer it into the future.

I would also commend those interested to look at how other venerable institutions -- like Self-Realization Fellowship and the Vedanta Society to name just two -- have addressed these problems in the past. There's no reason to either reinvent the wheel or commit the same mistakes already made by others. (Both of these institutions suffer, in my opinion, from the old school, top-down, authoritarian control model.)

One good example of transparency is that provided by the Gangaji Foundation. I don't know much about the group, but its leader -- Gangaji -- is a female teacher based in Oregon. She has a no-nonsense vibe and what I really like is that she posts, among other things, her foundation's financial reports online for public consumption (and here's their board ... nicely done). It's a great start and something I hope the Center emulates and improves upon.

Finally, more broadly, I hope that the Center takes a modern attitude towards control -- more new Google than old IBM, more strength in numbers and diversity, than top-down authority, more Barack Obama than George W. Bush.

It must be an exciting time to be a disciple. The opportunities are endless. I wish them all the best and can't wait to read their own memoirs in the near future.

Update (September 20, 2009): Just stumbled upon a great letter from Swami Vivekananda to his brother disciples. Writing from England in April 1896, Swamiji outlines the organizational structure of the Ramakrishna Math.

Amazing that more than a hundred years later -- with a few tweaks here and there -- Swamiji's outline could still serve as a model for organizing today's Sri Chinmoy Center.

Credit for the beautiful photo of Vivekananda Rock on the coast of Kanyakumari goes to indian~man on Flickr.

Conclusion

2009-02-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

It took 139 posts and more than a year, but I'm finally at the end.

I hope you've enjoyed the story.

Before summing up, I thought I'd share some of the motivations and principles that have guided me as I've written.

Initially, I wanted nothing more than to share Sahishnu's account of Guru's last hours. I had fully expected that in the days -- or at most weeks -- following Guru's death, the Center as an organization would release a detailed account of what happened from all those who were with Guru at the time.

Inexplicably, that was not to be (and still hasn't happened as far as I can tell).

After more than a month -- with no official word from the Center and no account of Guru's death whatever to be had-- I began to think about how I could get Sahishnu's account of what had happened out to those who would no doubt like to know (like Guru's thousands of active and former disciples). That's when the idea of a spiritual memoir hit me.

Aside from getting that important information out, what possible value could a memoir about my spiritual life have for anybody else? Honestly, I don't know.

What got me to write, though, was the thought that I could offer a different perspective on Guru and the Center than what was then available online. Though I have fallen short, my goal has been to try to replicate even a portion of the spirit of Christopher Isherwood's peerless spiritual memoir: My Guru and His Disciple. That is, I've tried to write a sincere and frank account of my time in the Center, all the time taking care not to slip into hagiography.

I've also worked to write something that I'd want to read if I were a new seeker and was looking for information about Guru and his spiritual path. I've tried to "keep it real." In my own seeking, I find lots of talk about avatars and miracles unhelpful and uninteresting. The idea, for example, that Swami Brahmananda was brought down to Earth eternally perfect from some high unseen world has no practical value to me as a seeker.

The fact, however, that Rakhal enjoyed having sex with his young wife (with the approval of his master), fathered at least one child, and then abandoned them -- these facts have value. They show a more complicated and human portrait of an undoubtedly great yogi, who nevertheless was a person who struggled with the same issues we modern seekers struggle with today. What does it mean, for example, that an advanced individual like Swami Brahmananda could enjoy the bliss of trance one minute and then exhibit behavior that falls beneath even ethical standards of conduct (i.e., not caring for one's wife and child, both of whom died while Brahmananda was wandering the countryside)?

Can a person be both extremely developed in an occult sense and dysfunctional in an emotional sense?

To the extent I've written about events in Guru's life that some may latch onto as "miracles" -- like the 7,000 pound lift -- I've simply tried to describe what happened, what I saw, without foisting any conclusions upon you the reader. I certainly don't think it was a miracle. As I've written before, I don't believe in miracles. There's a process behind everything, though sometimes it's not apparent.

Finally, I wanted to make a humble effort to pay tribute to the many people that have made a positive impression on me. I haven't written about them all. One notable absence, for instance, is a dedicated post about Databir, whose larger than life example influenced me -- and still influences me -- in ways I have simply found too difficult to put into words. Nevertheless, I'm grateful for the help, wisdom, and guidance I've received throughout my life thus far from some truly unique individuals. This is my small way of saying thank you.

As for the writing itself, my only constant guiding principle has been to do no harm. With two big exceptions, I've done my best not to criticize anybody that I'm writing about. In this, I think I've been successful.

The two exceptions to this rule have been Guru and myself.

I've learned a lot about myself over the past 15 months. Nothing more important, however, than the fact that the narrative arc of my spiritual life is one long -- unfinished -- story. In the past, when I've reflected upon my life inside the Center and out, I've tended to think of it in discrete chunks of time or experience: there was the time before I was in the Center; there were my Center days; my life outside the Center; my time in the Navy; my life as a husband, student, father, lawyer.

I see those memories now as chapters in a larger story. Each chapter provides a foundation for those to come. In the end, that's all I have.

Thank you for reading. As always, please send me your comments, questions, and feedback (yogaloy@yahoo.com). I do intend to publish one more post in the next week or so -- an epilogue of sorts sketching out my hopes for the Center going forward. Y.

Sudhir's Call

2009-02-14T12:34:00.000-08:00

I left the Center in 1990.

Since then, I've kept in contact with just a handful of disciples, none of them more so than Sudhir. Aside from my brother and sister, Sudhir was the only person I spoke to about spirituality with any frequency.

We emailed mostly, perhaps once a week. Every few months or so, though, we'd catch up on the phone. It wasn't all (or even mostly) spiritual talk. We'd talk about Center gossip, the latest developments in the world of professional cycling -- the Tour de France was of particular mutual interest -- and we'd talk about Sudhir's health.

He had been diagnosed with colon cancer and we'd discuss the latest treatments he was trying, some with apparent success at the time and all with harsh side effects.

Through all of that, I had become closer to Sudhir than I was with any other disciple. It was fitting then, I suppose, that Sudhir was the first person to call me with the news that Guru had died. As I explained in my very first post, Sudhir caught me shortly after I had arrived at my office in San Diego on the morning of October 11, 2007.

Less than 48 hours later, Jeevan and I were camped out in Sudhir's basement apartment in Jamaica, New York. For the next two and a half days, our visit felt like Celebrations to me (that twice yearly gathering of disciples in New York to see Guru), though tinged with somberness. It turned out to be the most moving trip I've ever made to New York.

It was impossible to escape the impact that Guru's death had had on all those active disciples who (unlike me) had remained dedicated to the Center to the end. Everywhere Jeevan and I went that weekend -- the Smile of the Beyond, the tennis court where Guru's open casket lay in state, Ketan's new cafe (Panorama of My Silence Heart), even a local Indian restaurant where we had dinner with some of the guys -- there were tears being shed by some, and many more with red, puffy eyes. It was very moving.

The disciples were also incredibly warm. From our first step into the Smile after arriving on Saturday morning (October 13), we were not just welcomed, but embraced. I quickly lost count of how many of my sister disciples I actually hugged that weekend. Hugging loved ones, particularly in a time of personal loss, is not something that would normally merit special mention. In the Center, however, where segregation of the sexes was near absolute, the gesture was striking to me and lovely.

At the time, I couldn't help but wonder whether the openness that Jeevan and I were experiencing simply had to do with our decision to show up. While it really wasn't a decision on our part -- there was no doubt that we'd make the trip out -- I think many disciples, in the backs of their minds, saw the memorial weekend as a litmus test for us ex-disciples.

Ever since some ex-disciples critical of Guru had loosely organized around an online message board, I think the active disciples had been feeling a bit under siege. It struck me that just our showing up that weekend was a vote of confidence on our part, one that was warmly welcomed by all we saw.

One of the best memories I had that weekend was standing just outside the tennis court in a circle of friends telling old war stories and belly laughing to near tears. It was particularly fun to watch Ketan, Sahadeva, Golapendu, Devashishu, and Jeevan -- the real brat pack of the Center -- recall their many youthful antics.

The laughter grew so loud at one point that we drew a shushing admonishment from some pious soul trying to meditate nearby. The shush -- and our complete and utter disregard of it -- was classic. The idea that some visiting disciple, who had never spent years serving Guru directly, would find the behaviour of these boys disagreeable was laughable (and so we laughed).

Another fond memory was a late night dinner at Lucille's diner with a dear friend. Lucille's is located right across Hillside Avenue from where the Center's old meditation hall -- Progress-Promise -- used to be located. Back in the day, it had been the one diner not off-limits to local disciples (the other local diners, like the Fame diner, were to be reserved so Guru could have places he could go to without being ogled by disciples while he ate). Lucille's was also probably the very first diner (except for the Smile) to offer vegetarian burgers.

Anyway, after spending hours at the tennis court on Saturday night, Sudhir, Jeevan, and I met up with Tejiyan at Lucille's. Tejiyan was like an unsheathed sword in intensity. We all talked for a few hours. It was a great end to our long first day in New York.

The purpose of our trip, of course, was to see Guru.

As Jeevan and I found out shortly after arriving, "friends" of the Center -- ex-disciples like us -- could see Guru twice daily: from noon to 1 p.m., and then again from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. So, that's what we did. At just before noon on Saturday, Jeevan, Sudhir, and I walked to the tennis court, which no longer resembled one.

As Jeevan and I walked up the driveway to the court and approached the gate leading inside, Prabhakar kindly instructed us to go right in. The gallery was full. There were two long lines of disciples -- boys on the right and girls on the left -- leading up to Guru's open casket at the head of the court, in the spot where he once sat long ago after rounds of tennis, where I had seen him many times before (here and here).

Those lines were stopped and the atmosphere was quiet and intense. We formed our own much shorter line up the middle of the tennis court. Flowers were everywhere and the air was filled with incense. (I'm sure there must be some beautiful pictures of it somewhere, but the only one I have found is this one from Guru's New York Times obituary.)

Because the "friends" line was so short, I initially felt a little rushed to get my shoes off and get up to the front, but as I did, I slowed myself down. The line itself ended maybe 15 feet away from Guru's open casket. Observing others, it appeared that, when it was your turn, the protocol was to move up as close as one wanted to Guru, take a minute or so, and then move on so that others in the line could have their chance.

Being an ex-disciple at any Center function, I'd always felt people's eyes on me (whether they were there or not). The feeling was magnified as the whole of the Center stood still to let us have a chance to pay our respects, too. As I came to the head of the line, however, and then moved forward towards Guru, it was just the two of us for a few short seconds.

Guru looked peaceful. He'd had a long and productive life. In a very real way, it had been as if Sri Ramakrishna had been given Swami Vivekananda's body and dynamism. As Swamiji liked to say, "Better to wear out, than to rust out." Well, that's exactly what Guru had done.

As I stood before Guru, I mentally prostrated myself before him in gratitude and then let the others behind me follow.

I'm not sure who actually took the beautiful picture of Sudhir, above, but I took it from this beautiful slide show about his life put together by his best friend, Harsha.

Last Words

2009-02-12T20:32:00.000-08:00

In the three remaining years of his life, I saw Guru twice, when he made visits to San Diego to give concerts. The two visits were very different.

The first was in October 2004. Guru gave a concert at the local Scottish Rights Temple and Ketan had called me and invited me to attend. I didn't see Ketan before the concert, but we did get a chance to chat for a little while just afterwards.

Apparently after the concert, Guru and the disciples were headed over to the disciple-run restaurant -- Jyoti Bihanga -- for an impromptu function. Ketan invited me there, too, but I demurred. I couldn't crash a disciple function, I told him. So, we said our goodbyes and I went home. It had been nice to have had the chance to see Guru and sit in the back of the concert hall and meditate. I was satisfied.

When I got home, though, Ketan called. He said that he'd asked Guru if I could attend the next morning's function at their hotel and that Guru had said I could. Early the next morning, I drove out to the hotel and picked Ketan up for a pre-function breakfast. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel, where the Center had rented a conference room for the morning meeting.

It was strange -- though not uncomfortably so -- to be in an almost exclusively disciple environment after some 14 years out of the Center. The room was filled disciples, men on the right and women on the left. Lots of New Yorkers had made the trip out. Guru sat up front in an over sized lounge chair.

As I recall, the function that morning was all business: a few hours of meditation and then some poetry recited by disciples, followed by prasad (or blessed food).

There were a lot of prasad items laid out in front of Guru to pick up and as I completed the task Guru began saying my name. It took me a few minutes, though, to realize what Guru was saying. In fact, I was about to walk back to my seat when Guru shouted out, "Didn't I give you the name Yogaloy?" I finally got the message.

Guru asked me to come closer and then there were no more words. For about a minute I stood there trying to open my entire psyche to his silent gaze. With a short nod of his head, Guru ended the meditation. As if transported back almost two decades, I wanted to be alone, to cherish the grateful feeling I had in my heart.

That was the last time Guru ever spoke to me.

The last time I ever saw Guru was about two and a half years later, just a few months before Guru passed away. He came to San Diego in June 2008 to give two concerts at the Symphony Hall here in one night.

The first concert of the night started at 6 p.m. and I had walked there straight from work, looking for some private meditation time alone somewhere in the back of the balcony section. From the beginning of the concert, though, I was distracted.

First, Guru didn't look very good. He appeared very stiff and unstable. His playing suffered. Before the concert, Ketan had presciently suggested that I bring my kids to the concert (a practical impossibility) because, he said, it might be their last opportunity to see Guru. I didn't think Guru looked that bad, but he definitely was not in good form.

As a result, people sitting in the balcony started walking out right from the beginning. It was disheartening. I felt embarrassed for Guru and, of course, I couldn't meditate. After about 45 minutes or so, Guru had some disciples perform. That's when I took my cue and left.

I sat out in the lobby for another 20 or 30 minutes feeling frustrated and a bit guilty for walking out, but I just couldn't take it. Once the concert ended, though, things got a little better. Before the second show started, I got a chance to chat with Ketan and a few other guys I hadn't seen in quite some time.

It never occurred to me that I'd never see Guru alive again.

The picture above is of my short meditation with Guru in October 2004. I don't know who to thank for taking the picture, but thank you to Ketan for getting them to me.

Savitri

2009-02-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

A few days before Bryon passed away, I was sworn into the California Bar.

It was the culmination of three years of classes and an intense three months of post-law school study for the bar exam. It was the start of my reentry into the working world.

For three years, I had commuted to and from school on my mountain bike, in shorts, with my ever present backpack full of books. From then on, it was suits and ties and daily shaving.

While still in law school, I had secured a clerkship at a small, high-end business litigation firm in downtown San Diego. Upon graduation from school, the firm hired me full-time. With my positive bar exam results, my cushy student life was over.

I took solace in Sri Aurobindo's final masterpiece: Savitri.

As I've written before, the most significant books I read during my three year law school career were Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of Yoga, and The Life Divine. In Savitri's 24,000 lines of blank verse, Auorbindo weaves the themes of his canon into a simple love story.

Here's the basic plot line:

Savitri is a princess. Her father -- the king -- is both regent and sage, but his inner illumination is hidden from the view of most everybody.

Savitri has some sense of providence, of being born for a high purpose. As a young woman, she rides out into the kingdom and beyond, eventually finding a beautiful deserted wood where she meets Satyavan, a young ascetic. They fall in love.

Savitri returns to her parents and tells them that she plans to go and live in the forest with Satyavan. At which point, a messenger of the gods -- Narada -- appears and warns them all that if Savitri weds Satyavan, Satyavan will die.

Undeterred, Savitri goes forward and marries Satyavan anyway. Satyavan is then stricken and the purpose of Savitri's life is revealed -- she was born to conquer death. In the end, she succeeds. The story ends with Savitri and Satyavan riding happily out of the forest and into the kingdom to begin their new life together. That's it in a nutshell -- it's a love story. (Here's Sri Aurobindo's note on the story.)

Savitri is also a symbol for the modern trend of spiritual evolution. Contrary to the commonly held view that renunciation of life -- renunciation of the world -- is the ultimate end of spiritual progress, renunciation is just a means to a more synthetic end: living life liberated from attachment. The message of Savitri isn't to renounce the world, but to embrace it.

That said, Savitri is a challenging read (to put it mildly). Two things made it easier for me though. First, I had already read most of Sri Aurobindo's canon -- particularly The Life Divine. I found the themes to be the same and easily recognizable having had already been exposed to them in Aurobindo's other writings.

Second, I read Savitri in small doses as I commuted into work each day on public transportation. Following the poetic and esoteric language alone -- not to mention trying to keep up with Aurobindo's prodigious vocabulary -- takes concentration. Reading a little at a time made it a lot easier to absorb.

With few exceptions -- politics perhaps being one -- it was difficult for me to imagine a more spiritually challenging profession than being a trial lawyer. Yet, that's the path I began to tread. Savitri made it a little easier.

Bryon Granmo

2009-02-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

The Center had no monopoly on unique and noble individuals who had a deep impact upon my personal development. Bryon Granmo is a prime example.

I met Bryon in the summer of 1998, just after I graduated from the Monterey Institute. I had just landed a job with a college text book publisher and when I started there, Bryon was a co-worker. As I recall, he was an assistant acquisition editor at the time and had an office just across from my desk, which sat out in the hallway.

I wasn't initially attracted to him. He always had a spring in his step, was cheerful and naturally gregarious. I was a little withdrawn. One day early on, however, I heard him say something like "...when I was in the Navy..." as he walked down the hallway talking to someone on his wireless headset. When he came back, I called him over.

"What'd you do in the Navy?"

"I was stationed on a ship in Japan," he responded.

"Officer or enlisted," I asked.

"Enlisted."

"What was your rate," I asked. With that question he focused -- only another former sailor such as myself would ask that question that way. (In the Navy, one's "rate" is an enlisted person's job specialty.)

"I was an IS," Bryon answered. "Were you in the Navy, too?"

"Yeah, I was an IS, too!" I answered -- "IS" standing for Intelligence Specialist.

As it turned out, Bryon and I had led curiously similar lives and quickly struck up a friendship. While I'd struck out on my own at a young age and entered the Center, Bryon went to Europe, where he aspired to bicycle race professionally (and I think did so at an entry level). We were both strong swimmers, too, and when his cycling career ended, Bryon joined the Navy to become a SEAL, just as I had.

Neither of us achieved our goal of becoming Navy SEALs and we were both then sent to the fleet. Whereas I got out of the Navy after my first enlistment, though, Bryon stayed in and was sent for shore duty at the Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey. When his time there was up, he too got out and landed himself a job at the publishing house where we then met.

About a year into my job at the publishing house, there were a number of changes made in the editorial department of our office. One was that Bryon became my boss, taking over for a very nice woman who went on maternity leave and never returned full-time. The other was that the company decided to double my responsibilities. A person in the marketing department had left the company, and the higher-ups decided that perhaps I could do both my job and the marketing database job as well.

So, right after becoming my boss, Bryon began to mediate the negotiations between me, on the one hand, and the Vice-President of Editorial and the HR folks, on the other hand. The details are pedestrian, but at a critical point I unknowingly demanded an amount in salary increase that would have surpassed even Bryon's pay. The Vice-President told Bryon that he would not pay me more than he paid Bryon. Then Bryon did the extraordinary -- he lobbied for me to get the higher pay anyway.

In the end, we both got raises. I got the amount I had demanded, and Bryon got just a little more! Then, I started applying to law schools. When my plans to move to San Diego became firm, I told Bryon. Coincidentally, he said, he and his lovely wife Adele were moving to San Diego, too!

Once in San Diego, we made a trip over to Bryon and Adele's place, and I kept in pretty good email contact with Bryon, but as I got immersed in my law school studies, our communications dropped off. Realizing this one day near graduation, I sent Bry an email apologizing for not keeping in touch and asking him what the latest was on his end.

He responded that he'd been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer.

After a courageous battle, Bryon passed away on January 9, 2004, leaving behind Adele and their beautiful baby daughter Marit.

A naturally religious man and unpretentious Christian, Bryon led by example. I'm very grateful for the short time I had to know him and the deep impact that he had on me. I'll never forget him.

Night Terrors

2009-02-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

I've never felt quite so helpless as when my daughter Erin suffered from nightmares.

About halfway through my law school career -- sometime in 2002 -- Erin began having bad dreams. She was about four years old, and just about an hour and a half after she'd fall asleep, it would start.

They were more than bad dreams or plain nightmares. It was as if she were being attacked. Literally. Her eyes would be open, terrified at some sight invisible to my wife and me. For 15 minutes or so, Erin struggled to physically push her unseen attacker off of herself.

It looked to me as if someone was pawing at her and she was struggling for her life. And I was powerless to intervene.

I chanted silently in her ear. I synchronized my breathing with hers, opened my heart, and identified myself with her. We tried various fragrant essential oils and kept fresh flowers in the bedroom. Nothing worked though.

After months of this torture, I suggested that we ask Guru for help. Elaine agreed.

I looked through our recent snapshots and found a nice, close-up photo of Erin's face and her beautiful eyes. I then wrote a simple note to Guru, describing what was happening, expressing our feelings of helplessness, and plainly asking for his help.

The night terrors stopped immediately and never returned. (Erin has since morphed into a bit of a sleepwalker, but that's easy enough to deal with.)

Let me say straightaway, I don't believe in "miracles." As Sri Aurobindo has said, there's a process behind all phenomena. Sometimes, it's hidden or "occult," but that doesn't mean the underlying process doesn't exist.

At an energetic level -- over which I had no facility -- something frightening was happening to my daughter. Guru fixed it.

That's Erin and me above enjoying kites at the beach.

The Truth

2009-01-31T19:25:00.000-08:00

It's a "she said - he said" situation.

That's the first thought that occurred to me as I rode home from school that day, unable to study for my fast approaching law school exams. Sevika had said that she'd had sex with Guru. Guru, presumably, denied it. They couldn't both be right. A classic "she said - he said." Nobody -- save Sevika and Guru -- would ever know the truth.

I acknowledge that. I'll never know whether Guru had sex with Sevika (or in the alternative, whether Sevika's allegation is a false one). I'll never know.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, my dissatisfaction with the realization that I'd never know the truth about Sevika's allegation led me to turn to the law in the hope of finding an answer. Courts deal with these types of conundrums every day, I'd reasoned. Judges and juries must have a way of deciding who is telling the truth when the stories of two people conflict.

Sure enough, I discovered, they do. When there's an absence of any other evidence -- like corroborating documents or an incriminating video tape -- jurors just decide whose story they believe. Right or wrong -- for the purposes of "justice" -- their decision is the truth.

That's not to say that judges and juries make such decisions lightly or without the aid of reason. In California -- as I suspect is true in most places -- the evidence code provides some guidance. It suggests a number of factors that the judge or jury may use to help them judge a witness' credibility, like his or her demeanor in court, his or her character for honesty (or its opposite), or the existence of bias, among others.

This system works well. That is to say, it works efficiently. Everyday, men are imprisoned and women lose custody of their kids based on just such decisions. The problem, of course, is that judges and juries make mistakes. They don't know the truth. And in making such mistakes, lives are ruined.

I'm no judge. A judge is expected to be cold, to be removed emotionally from the individuals standing before him seeking justice, to be impartial, and to be decisive. That's not me. Instead, I'm encumbered by life lessons that have stressed the importance of loyalty, gratitude, and fairness.

For one thing, I've always been acutely aware of how it feels to be blamed for things that I didn't do. One morning, for example, when I was about seven years old, my father came into my room, turned on the lights, and angrily interrogated me about our next door neighbor's bicycle. Apparently, one their bikes had been vandalized in the middle of the night and the neighbor said she saw me -- in her garage in the middle of the night -- doing the damage.

I was seven years old, for Christ's sake. Surely, nobody would believe such a story. When I denied it, though, my dad spanked me. Apparently, the neighbor's story was so outrageous that it had to be true. I've never forgotten how helpless I felt at that moment when my word alone wasn't good enough.

To make matters worse, I had another problem when I was a kid. Sometimes I smiled at inappropriate times. This was particularly true when I was being asked whether or not I was telling the truth -- a seemingly regular question during my childhood -- I would smile. Thus, I was seldom believed.

Those experiences not only left me wanting to be believed, but they also reminded me how important it was to assume the good faith of others. They also laid the foundation for my overly developed sense of personal loyalty. That lesson, however, came much harder. It took getting a taste of my own medicine -- my own disloyalty -- to learn it well.

I've already recounted how I abandoned my high school chum, Charlie, when he left the Center. It was only years later, when I myself decided to leave and some disciples, whom I had thought were close to me, instead turned a cold shoulder. That's when I realized how disloyal I had been to Charlie years earlier, when he needed a friend most. Loyalty isn't about standing by a friend in good times. It's about standing by in bad, even when their choices disappoint you.

It's about being unconditional.

I'm reminded of the best professor I ever had, Francis Teti. He taught graduate classes at the Monterey Institute, like "National Security Policy in the 21st Century," which turned out to be Socratic seminars on concepts like agape (or unconditional love). I remember Professor Teti once posed a hypothetical situation in which a father's son commits a heinous act of some kind.

Professor Teti wondered aloud whether he would, in such a situation, ever speak to his son again. At Professor Teti's prompting, a student suggested that if the father's love for his son was conditioned upon the son's good behavior, then by definition such love couldn't be unconditional agape.

The difficulty most people seem to have with the concept of unconditional love or loyalty is that they believe that to stand by someone -- particularly when that person has done something wrong -- is to condone that wrong act. That's flawed reasoning. The father in Professor Teti's hypothetical could still love his son, visit him in prison, try to give him comfort, and hope for his son's further progress (and still not condone the crime).

Finally, I have a long memory for those who have helped me become a better person, many of whom I've profiled on this site before (including Sevika). None, however, have done as much for me as Guru. From the kind and gentle praise he gave me in my early days, to the subtle nudges he gave me in later years, to the direct tests he put in front of me after I had left the Center -- Guru changed my life for the better.

For those reasons, my loyalty lies with Guru.

Update: My thinking on these matters has evolved since the original posting of this piece. See, for example, this post for some additional thoughts.

The photo above is of a beautiful sculpture "Veritas" -- Truth -- by Audrey Flack. Check out her other amazing works here. I love how, unlike the many statues of Lady Justice -- whose eyes are typically completely covered to signify that "justice is blind" -- the eyes of the Truth are exposed.

In Memory: Sudhir

2009-01-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

February 24, 1955 - January 20, 2009

To the still heights and to the troubled depths

His equal spirit gave its vast assent:

A poised serenity of tranquil strength,

A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest

Faced all experience with unaltered peace.

Please take the time to check out this beautiful slide show of Sudhir set up by his good friend Ian "Harsha" Prior: http://web.mac.com/ianprior/iWeb/Site/Sudhir.html.

Photo of Sudhir by Unmesh. Opening poem is an excerpt from Savitri, Book One, Canto Three, by Sri Aurobindo.

The Board

2009-01-17T12:05:00.000-08:00

I no longer remember why I did it.

I suppose it was boredom or, perhaps, my natural inclination to put off the inevitable -- I had an entire day ahead of me devoted to studying constitutional law, property rights, contracts, or whatever subject was on tap for my upcoming law school finals. The first exam was three days away and I was having trouble getting started that morning.

It was December 2001. With finals complete, I'd be exactly halfway through law school. For whatever reason, though, I logged out of my email account that morning and instead of getting up and walking out of the computer lab to start studying in the library, I Googled the term "Sri Chinmoy Ex-Disciple." From there, it took me just a few seconds to find the Board.

The "Board" is a Yahoo Groups message board, which had been set up by a disgruntled former disciple and which had quickly gained attention both inside and outside the Center for some of the salacious allegations posted there. I had heard, through the grapevine, that the Board existed, but had never taken a look myself.

Why hadn't I waited until after finals to look at it?

I have no good answer to that question, but I didn't. With three days to study for my first exam, I instead spent the next day and a half reading the nearly 1,000 messages on the Board and digesting the shocking allegations made there. Most of the posts were rants by people who, when identifiable, I didn't have a high opinion of, even when they had been in the Center. There were, however, two or three allegations by women who claimed that Guru had engaged in sexual misconduct with them when they had been disciples.

My head was spinning. I was so shocked by the allegations that I left the computer lab after reading all the messages, went to my bike, and rode home. There was no way that I could study; I couldn't concentrate on anything other than processing all of the information I had just taken in. That meant that I had to work quickly -- I couldn't blow my law school exams. That was not an option.

On my bike ride home, I quickly decided to focus my attention only upon the allegations of sexual misconduct, and not on the more numerous -- and in my view, less serious -- complaints of Guru's harshness or unfairness. That some ex-disciples were upset about the treatment they received from Guru was not surprising to me. The allegations that Guru was having sex was.

My next analytic decision was to consider only those posts on the Board that could be construed as direct evidence. Direct evidence in this case would be only those allegations made by people with direct knowledge (e.g., people who saw acts done or words spoken). In other words, I wasn't interested in the opinions and emotional outrage of others. I was just interested in the testimonials of the women allegedly involved.

To simplify matters further, I made one final decision: I would only consider what I deemed to be the most devastating of allegations. If I could come to grips with the worst allegation made against Guru, then I figured I wouldn't have to parse the others.

That allegation was made by Sevika.

The picture above is looking west along the San Diego River bike path, which I took home each day from school. Photo credit here.

The Blue Lotus

2009-01-17T08:45:00.000-08:00

Before moving to San Diego, my grandfather and namesake passed away. Generously, he left each of his grandchildren a modest inheritance.

Mine disappeared immediately into the coffers of Visa and MasterCard, whose services I had used to leverage my education. Jeevan and Nirbachita, however, became entrepreneurs.

Jeevan, who had settled in Santa Cruz after leaving the Center, used his money to open a yoga studio in Aptos, which he named Yoga Within. He ran it successfully for a few years before selling it.

Nirbachita, too, went into business for herself. She was still in the Center and as I recall, even before she moved to New York permanently -- before she had even inherited any money -- Guru had suggested that she open a cafe of some kind.

So, naturally, that's what she considered doing when she eventually came into the money. By then, however, Nirbachita's relationship with Guru was tempestuous. At the time, we were talking on the phone with each other fairly regularly and she seemed unsure whether to go forward with the idea. I seem to remember that, once she had the money in hand, she actually asked Guru to tell her whether she should open a shop or not, but Guru demurred.

With a natural courage that I never had, Nirbachita went forward alone. She found a nice location in Forest Hills, where she opened a beautiful little cafe, which she named The Blue Lotus. That's when, it seemed to me, the trouble began.

When a disciple opens a new store -- which in Center lingo is called an "enterprise" -- there are two general expectations.

First, it's practically a given that Guru will give the new enterprise a spiritual name, usually before it's opened. After all, the enterprise is dedicated to Guru and almost always has his photos and art on the walls, his music playing in the background, and his books available for sale. In fact, I can think of no business opened by a disciple in Queens during my time in the Center that Guru did not name.

Except Nirbachita's place.

The second expectation of a new enterprise owner is that Guru will visit. Along with Guru's visit come lots of disciples and some quick business. The true value of such a visit, though, is a morale boost. Guru's visit is his way of blessing both the new enterprise and its intrepid owner.

Guru, however, refused to visit The Blue Lotus. In fact, Guru stuck it to Nirbachita even one better. Not only did he tell her that he wouldn't be visiting her cafe, but he also prohibited certain prominent female disciples from visiting it, too. In the status conscious Center, that move was the death blow. It assured that very few disciples would ever see Nirbachita's beautiful creation.

I hesitate to delve too deeply into the underlying controversy, in part because there's so little depth to explore. A young disciple, whom Guru was fond of, left the Center. Nirbachita showed her some compassion and let her work in the cafe. That was it.

By August 2001, with my first year of law school over and Nirbachita seemingly in need of a morale boost of her own, I flew to New York for a short visit. On my first night there, there was a public meditation. Amazingly to me, Nirbachita had brought seekers (i.e., potential disciples she had more or less recruited) to the meditation, despite feeling under siege by Guru's poor treatment. I couldn't have withstood that kind of pressure. To her great credit, Nirbachita displayed complete equanimity.

I must say also that at the time, I wasn't all that worked-up over Guru's treatment of my sister. For at least a year or two, I had viewed Guru's harsh treatment of Nirbachita as his indirect, passive-aggressive way of trying to push her out of the Center. Not because she wasn't good enough for disciple life, but rather because, for her, the usefulness of disciple life had ended.

For Nirbachita, the spiritual life wasn't something that she did, it was who she was. Spirituality -- goodness, a constant quest to better oneself, to refine one's nature -- is integral to her personality. At that point in one's development, the need for the organized rules, regulations, and structure of a communal existence become a drag on one's further development, rather than an aid.

Nevertheless, I never encouraged Nirbachita to leave the Center. We had many frank conversations and I listened carefully and gave my take on things when asked, but I had decided that I wasn't going to overtly suggest that she leave Guru. That was for her to decide on her own.

Based upon my own experience -- and that of others that I have observed -- those who make the stark decision to leave the Center on their own, with little or no emotional help from others, seem to fare the best outside the Center.

For me -- and at the time, I expected for Nirbachita, too -- the internal process of mustering the courage to leave the Center, which literally took me years, is an intense and invaluable opportunity to mature. By actively and openly encouraging Nirbachita to leave the Center, I thought I might interfere with that valuable, albeit painful, experience.

In any event, the public meditation held on my first night in Queens was held at the tennis court, which had become standard in the years since I had been in the Center (rather than at P.S. 86). When Guru called the men seekers (which included ex-disciples like me), I descended from the gallery and sat amongst some 20 or 30 other guys in front of him.

As Guru scanned the seekers before him with half-closed eyes, I was a little apprehensive, wondering whether he'd recognize me. It seemed doubtful, considering the time that had passed, my civilian clothes (rather than the disciple whites), and my seat near the back of all the others. But as Guru looked past me, his head stopped, and he looked back in my direction for a few seconds. Then, opening his eyes fully -- as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing -- Guru looked at me directly.

That was it.

The next day was fantastic. I got to spend some time at The Blue Lotus, which had a French countryside motif. Then, my personal heroes, Bhima and Tejiyan, took me and Nirbachita surfing at Jones Beach. I've had a long love affair with the Gulf Stream, but that was the first time I ever surfed. Under the expert tutelage of the brothers Hogan, we had a great time.

On my last morning in New York, I ran with Sundar. It was a typical hot and humid August morning and despite the passage of some 12 years since our last run, Sundar hadn't lost a step. He hammered me for four or five miles before my younger body began to shut down.

Then, as he had done many times before, Sundar patiently walked and ran with me as I struggled to finish the last mile. It was a fitting end to a nice trip.

Photo credit here.

One L

2009-01-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

What a relief to be a student again, particularly in San Diego!

In the summer of 2000, my family and I settled in the community of Ocean Beach and I began preparing for my first year of law school (or "One L"). The first thing I did upon arrival was to buy a mountain bike, which I used to commute to school each day.

With few exceptions, for the next three years I'd wear shorts and t-shirts every day. Hard to beat that.

As for law school itself, for better and for worse, it wasn't what I had expected. On the bright side, I found the experience nothing like the brutal experience described by Scott Turow in his classic memoir of his first year at Harvard Law: One L. That's probably because I didn't go to Harvard, and because my personal disposition was a little more laid back than Scott's was when he started school.

At the outset, I had decided to treat law school like a job. I kept bankers' hours (and not lawyers' hours). Typically, I got to school around 9 a.m. and left by 4:30 or 5 p.m. I didn't do weekends and didn't do homework. I either got my work done during the day or I didn't do it. The only exception being the end of each semester, when I studied for final exams.

On the downside, I didn't find my first year of law school as stimulating as I had hoped. I was learning a lot, no doubt, but I had imagined law school as a place to debate the great issues of the day -- for example, Bush v. Gore. In this I was disappointed. There was too much material to cover and most of my classmates just didn't seem interested in much else.

As it turned out, the most provocative, intellectually demanding, and influential books I read during my three-year law school career were esoteric: Sri Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita, Synthesis of Yoga, and his magnum opus The Life Divine. If I were to identify a canon of my spiritual life, then these books, along with Autobiography of a Yogi, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Isherwood's My Guru and His Disciple (and post-law school, Aurobindo's Savitri) would be it.

I can't do justice to these books in this simple post -- each rightly deserves an entire blog site of its own. But, the message I took home is crystallized in the short quote I've inserted just beneath the title of this blog site: "All life is Yoga."

To me, that had become true. I no longer distinguished between the "inner life" and the "outer life," between the "spiritual" and the "worldly" as I once had done in the Center. Those distinctions carried implicit value judgments -- "spiritual" was good, "worldly" was bad. Whatever their earlier value, such distinctions no longer had any utility for me.

With the advent of my law school career, I began the process of not only integrating the disparate members of my psyche -- body, life force, mind, and psychic -- but also of synthesizing myself with the world at large. The motto "All life is Yoga" -- and the underlying canon of Sri Aurobindo supporting it -- was key to that process of mine, which spanned my three years in school.

Interestingly, law school made Sri Aurobindo's works -- particularly The Life Divine -- accessible to me. Studying law the American way, using the casebook method, requires law students to read thousands of pages of obtuse, jargon-heavy, and at times complicated legal opinion and reasoning. That was exactly the kind of training it took for me to be able to read and follow Sri Aurobindo's tightly reasoned explication of the occult process and purpose of the human experiment.

During the summer break after my first year of law school, I spent six weeks interning for the local public defender's office, the highlight of which -- for a first-year law student anyway -- came every Friday, when I took an active role in felony arraignment. Arraignment is typically a criminal defendant's first appearance in court, at which time he or she usually enters a plea of not guilty.

The court then decides whether to remand the defendant into custody, set bail, or (rarely) to release the defendant on his or her own recognisance (i.e., without having to post any bail at all). Along with my fellow student interns, my job was to interview defendants being held in custody in a small, oppressively hot cell just beside the courtroom. The cell, which measured about 15 feet deep by ten feet wide, usually held ten to 15 defendants wearing orange jumpsuits inside.

The defendants were hot, tired, and stressed. Most had been in custody at least a day and had not showered. None had lawyers and we were sent in to get basic information about them, which might aid in lowering their bail requirement. For example, if you have a job, a family, and a house, it's assumed that you are less likely to go on the lamb if released, thus your bail is likely to be lower.

The sheriff's deputies, who controlled the prisoners in and around the courthouse, got a kick out of locking us frightened looking law students in the cell (and then ignoring our banging on the door to be let out once the interviews were complete). It was a good experience for me though. Working for the public defender gave me a practical opportunity to, among other things, work though and eliminate my subtle prejudices. With that, my first year of law school was complete.

Before I began my second year classes, though, I decided to make a trip to New York. It was Nirbachita's birthday and I figured that she needed a morale boost.

Confidence-Light

2009-01-02T20:59:00.000-08:00

Shortly after my reawakening, I began writing letters to Guru.

Not all the time, mind you, but once every four or five months. I'd usually start such letters by giving Guru a basic update of my career and family life, and then summarize any dreams or experiences that I thought were of significance. From time to time, I'd also ask Guru rhetorical questions (generally speaking, Guru did not answer letters).

In the late spring of 2000 -- after Nirbachita had made her permanent move to New York -- I wrote one such letter to Guru. I started by telling Guru that I had decided to go to law school in San Diego. I had quickly become bored with my duties at the textbook publisher and had applied to four law schools. Of the three schools that accepted my application, the one in San Diego had the most to offer my family. We were set to move down from Monterey come July.

I then related, in my letter to Guru, some of the recent experiences I had been having in my walking meditations. Finally, I concluded the letter by asking Guru a question that I never expected him to answer.

Some 15 years earlier, Guru had written down what he thought was my worst personal quality (the back story is here). Written above, the note he gave me says: "Lack of Confidence-Light in the aspiration heart." In short, Guru's note meant that I had no confidence in my own spirituality. At the time, I didn't get it. But 15 years later, as I wrote my letter to Guru, I felt that I did finally understand.

Not only that, but I thought I had finally conquered my worst quality and I told Guru so in my letter. Since replacing Guru's picture with my own chakras as the object of my concentration, I had become almost spiritually cocky.

So, I ended my letter to Guru that spring with a question. I reminded him of that function so many years ago when he told me my worst quality. I told him that I thought I had overcome that problem, and I asked him if I was right. Then I dropped the letter in the mail.

Three days later I had an answer. I was sitting in my office at work when Nirbachita called. She was hesitant. She prefaced her remarks by saying that she was only passing a message on. She intimated that I wasn't going to like it.

"I was at the tennis court," she began, "and Guru called me aside. He says that you should not go to law school."

I felt a little stunned as Nirbachita continued. "Guru said that if you go to law school, you will lose whatever spirituality you might have left." I loved that last bit -- "whatever spirituality you might have left."

In any event, that was it. I didn't stay on the phone with Nirbachita much longer. Like I said, I was initially shocked. Could I make an about face and not go to law school? I thought about it for a moment, but there was no way. I'd already given notice at my job, secured student loans, et cetera.

Then, for about ten minutes or so, I was angry -- at Guru for interfering, at myself for inviting it. After calming down a bit, though, I began to reflect upon my own feelings. The more I thought about it, the more confident I began to feel in my decision to go. Nevertheless, as I began my short walk home from work that day, I was still a little stressed by Guru's message.

Why had I told Guru about my plans? Why had I invited him, with my letter, to interfere? As I walked home, I decided then and there to stop sending such letters to Guru.

Then it struck me: the letter!

In the letter that I had sent to Guru informing him about my plans to go to law school, I had boasted about having overcome my worst quality. In essence, I had told Guru that I was wholly confident in my own spirituality.

His response? To challenge my assertion.

On the one hand, my own Guru was telling me that if I went ahead with my plan to go to law school, then I'd lose all my spirituality. On the other hand, my own "aspiration-heart" was telling me to go to law school.

Where did my confidence lie?

As I made my way home, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Lines of Communication

2009-01-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

By 1999, Jeevan was no longer in the Center.

In the years just before, he had been working with our sister, Nirbachita, to re-establish a Sri Chinmoy Center in Santa Cruz, the very Center where I had started my journey so many years before. They had been making some gains in attracting seekers and had even put on a successful swim-run biathlon.

Then word made it back to Guru that Jeevan had become romantically involved with someone. He was summarily kicked out of the Center.

Shortly thereafter, Jeevan asked Guru if he could return to the Center. In response, Ashrita told Jeevan that Guru had expressed surprise to hear that Jeevan wanted back in, but that if he did, then he must move to the San Francisco Center (where, presumably, Jeevan would have less "freedom"). It didn't take long, however, for someone to spot Jeevan getting out of a car driven by a female disciple. Guru kicked Jeevan out of the Center for the second (and last) time.

Much later, Jeevan told me that he knew that his disciple-life had been over for some time, but that he couldn't bring himself to leave Guru.

Jeevan's departure from the Center left just our sister Liz still remaining. By then (1999), though, Guru had given her the name of Nirbachita. Literally it means "chosen" or "selected" in Bengali. Guru's more elaborate meaning was: "A Supremely chosen instrument-child of our Absolute Lord Beloved Supreme to please Him in His own way."

The Chosen One!

Unfortunately for her, Nirbachita was beginning to have a rough go of it. She was living in San Francisco and working at the disciple-run restaurant there, Ananda Fuara. At the time, day-to-day management of the restaurant was the responsibility of a person lacking in inter-personal skills who clashed with Nirbachita. Instead of ironing out any differences, though, the manager would call Ashrita in New York and complain about her.

I could sympathize. Her situation reminded me of my time in the Navy. It's a real challenge to work in a high stress, low pay environment, especially when being managed by idiots. For the first time in our lives, Nirbachita and I began talking fairly regularly. And it wasn't just about the everyday stress of work.

Nirbachita couldn't have been more devoted to Guru, which made it that much more difficult for her to deal with the treatment Guru was subjecting her to. I've written before about Guru's "tough love," but that's not what I'm describing here. Instead, Guru began treating Nirbachita unfairly. It was the start of a perplexing downward spiral in relations between them, all instigated by Guru.

Recently, when I asked Nirbachita to tell me the most hurtful thing Guru did to her, she recalled this time period. One of her friends had just left the Center and Guru had blamed Nirbachita for it. To make matters worse, Guru didn't say anything to Nirbachita herself, nor did he have the message delivered to her in the normal fashion (via his messenger Ashrita). Instead, Guru spread the news rumor-style to some other disciples and let it trickle down to her (and others of course).

When Nirbachita heard the news, she cried literally all night, she said. When she finally fell asleep, however, she was comforted in an unusual way. In a vivid dream, Swami Vivekananda sat down next to her, put his arm on her shoulder, and consoled her.

At first, I didn't know what to make of Guru's treatment of Nirbachita (which in my opinion got worse later on, as I'll address a few posts from now). Guru had generally treated me with kid gloves. But as I reflected upon my own Center experience, I had come to the conclusion that Guru might have been trying to push me out of the Center, like a mother bird trying to get its chick to leave the nest.

With Nirbachita, it seemed, the mother bird was actually pecking her pretty hard. A short time after her Swami Vivekananda dream, things came to a head at the restaurant and Guru's solution was to tell Nirbachita move up to the Seattle Center (rather than have the troublesome restaurant manager move).

In one of our telephone conversations, I hypothesized that if Guru was given the choice of kicking only one of two disciples out of the Center, he'd kick the saner of the two out every time. A sane person, like Nirbachita, I reasoned, would thrive outside the Center and continue her quest for personal development. Not so with some folks in the Center. For some disciples -- and certainly for most of us in the very beginning -- life in the Center was a step up: simple drug- and alcohol-free living, relatively healthy food, exercise.

That's what I told Nirbachita upon her exile to Seattle. She was the stronger one, so she was moved.

That Nirbachita was slowly moving towards life on the outside was clear to me then, and it became even more apparent once she made her final move from Seattle to New York, where, for no apparent reason, Guru continued to treat her harshly and unfairly.

Photo credit of my sister goes to a very nice San Francisco Center disciple named Astika.

My Guru and His Disciple

2008-12-28T11:30:00.000-08:00

It's impossible for me to overstate the importance of Christopher Isherwood's spiritual memoir, My Guru and His Disciple, to my own spiritual development.

I read it in late 1998, after my reawakening and the birth of my daughter. At that point, it immediately became the third book in what I then considered to be my spiritual canon, along with Autobiography of a Yogi, and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

While Autobiography inspired me to look for a guru and take up the spiritual life, and The Gospel inflamed my spiritual desire to its peak, Isherwood's loving and critical look back at his own guru, his own "Center," and his own spiritual life was instrumental in my ability to critically understand my Center years and to understand them in context.

Isherwood was born in England and educated at Cambridge. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States to avoid being drafted at home. While living in Germany during the 1930s, Isherwood had fallen in love with a young German named Heinz. He couldn't bear the thought of facing Heinz on the battlefield and sought to avoid such a confrontation by seeking work in America.

When he arrived in Los Angeles, Isherwood didn't believe in God, at least not the white-haired old man ruling from a golden throne in heaven, the one praised by "crosstians" and who apparently could not stand a certain segment of His own creation known as homosexuals. Then he met his guru.

Isherwood's guru was Swami Prabhavananda, of the Ramakrishna Order. Swami Prabhavananda was, in turn, a direct disciple of Swami Brahmananda, the first president of the Ramakrishna Order and one of Sri Ramakrishna's closest disciples. A friend of Isherwood's pressed him to meet Swami Prabhavananda, so he did, though Isherwood didn't have very high expectations for the meeting.

Isherwood had just one serious question to ask the swami and if "his answer was unsatisfactory to me, there would be no point in our ever seeing each other again." "In essence it was: Can I lead a spiritual life as long as I'm having a sexual relationship with a young man?" The swami answered correctly.

"You must try to see him as the young Lord Krishna," Swami Prabhavananda said.

As Isherwood later recalled, what convinced him that he could become the swami's pupil was that the swami "hadn't shown the least shadow of distaste on hearing me admit to my homosexuality." Thus began Isherwood's 35-plus years as the swami's disciple, which is the subject of his spiritual masterwork.

My Guru and His Disciple is an antidote to the good-intentioned evil of hagiography. As put so succinctly in its Wikipedia entry, hagiography has become a pejorative term for biographies and histories written about saints and religious figures that are uncritical of their subjects or even reverential in tone. While it's understandable why a disciple might want to write only flattering things about his or her guru, to shade the truth or lie by omission is a huge disservice, particularly to later seekers who will never have the opportunity to meet the guru in person.

The result of hagiography is to turn the guru into a perfect being, someone who descended out of the clouds and crapped sandalwood. While such holy figures may inspire awe in beginners, they become totally unreachable as human beings and thus have little utility to most seekers who have progressed beyond the beginner's stage.

I'm reminded of this so often when I read the facile criticism of modern gurus -- my own included -- in which critics hold up past masters like Sri Ramakrishna or Swami Yogananda as paragons of modern ethical behaviour and then argue such moral rectitude is evidence (1) of the spiritual attainment of those past masters and (2) of the spiritual depravity of the modern guru who displays various petty human qualities like fear, insecurity, or other acts of small mindedness. If only they had a true picture of the human personalities of such past masters, then they wouldn't be so quick to judge the human frailties of the modern gurus.

That's why Isherwood's book is so refreshing. He tells it like it is -- about himself, his own guru, and his guru's spiritual organization. All three are better for it. I love, for example, the following diary entry Isherwood made:

May 22 [1974]. Swami talked about Ramakrishna and Girish Ghosh. They once had a competition to find out which of them knew the bigger number of risque words. (It was amusing to hear this corny French adjective pop up out of Swami's vocabulary.) After they had both said all the risque words they knew, Girish bowed down and told Ramakrishna, "You are my guru in this also."

What a great anecdote. It means more to me as a seeker than any recounting of Thakur spending days in samadhi or going into ecstasy. But imagine, for just a moment, what would happen if a YouTube video hit the Internet showing the "supposed" holy man -- thinking he was alone with just his intimate disciples -- sitting in his room at Dakshineswar spitting out the most vile cuss words, to the hysterical laughter of his inner circle. A public relations nightmare -- and thus the understandable inclination of the hagiographic whitewash. It's too bad.

Isherwood's book hides nothing. His intellectual rigour -- his sincerity -- was deeply moving to me at a time when I found myself trying to integrate and synthesize my own memories of disciple life, my new found spiritual life, and my burgeoning intellectual development. Isherwood showed the way.

I envy those who have yet to discover My Guru and His Disciple. How I wish I could read it again for the first time.

Drawing above is of Christopher Isherwood by Don Bachardy.

Growing Family

2008-12-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

In December 1997, I completed my undergraduate degree, and because I had gone to school full-time over both summers, I was on track to finish my graduate degree just a few months later.

Before that final graduation from the Monterey Institute, however, I had an interesting experience at the local shopping mall. While walking behind a young couple and their five or six year old daughter, it occurred to me that having another child would be nice.

At that point (in early 1998), Elaine and I had not discussed having another child. Sean was about four at the time and until then, I had thought that one child was enough. My focus was on finishing up school and then getting a career of some kind started. Having more children had been the last thing on my mind.

And yet, that's what I was thinking as I watched that little girl walking along with her parents at the mall. Later that week, Elaine told me that she was pregnant -- the baby was due in November 1998.

The news of Elaine's pregnancy was the last blow to my long dying dream of becoming a spy. The blow fell softly though; over the previous few years, and certainly since my re-awakening, I had begun to realize that my path in life lay elsewhere.

So, with my graduation from the Monterey Institute in late May 1998, I began looking for a job with benefits that would permit us to remain living on the Monterey Peninsula. With luck, I landed a position at a local college textbook publisher as a project manager of sorts in its editorial department. It was located just a ten-minute walk from our apartment.

The pay there was abysmal -- especially considering my looming student loans -- but it provided us with health insurance, great working conditions, and the people were very nice to work with. And because I could walk back and forth to work each day, I was able to continue with the spiritual practice I had started about a year earlier. I had been secretly chanting the seed sounds, to which practice I attributed some new experiences I had been having.

In the hour or so just before waking up in the morning -- when my conscious mind began to register sensory data but would remain asleep for another hour or so if left undisturbed -- I began to feel a circular buzzing sensation in different parts of my body. One morning it was at the base of my throat, the next morning in my chest or throat or navel or groin -- the very areas I had been concentrating on while chanting each day.

The "buzzing" felt sort of like that sensation one gets when one's leg falls asleep. You know, when you adjust it and the circulation begins again? It feels like its buzzing kind of. But the sensation I felt wasn't uncomfortable at all. It was also localized in one area (sometimes two) and it seemed to be spinning very quickly. Laying in bed, I'd immediately become aware of the motion and silently observe it for the minute or so that the experience lasted.

The only other noticeable effect on my consciousness which I attributed to my chanting was a more varied dream life. Until then, I had never been very conscious of my dream life. Typically, I slept pretty hard and even those few dreams that I remembered were pretty mundane. As I've written before, I was never prone to visions.

By the time I had graduated and began working at the publishing company, however, that had changed. I was having more dreams -- often vivid ones -- and I was remembering them. Some of them I remember even now with a thrill. In one, for example, I found myself sitting in the basement meditation room of the old San Francisco Center with Guru and Swami Yogananda. In another dream, I was alone with Sri Ramakrishna in his room at Dakshineswar. We were sitting next to each other, cross-legged. How magical it was to sit with Thakur, our knees touching one another.

In late October 1998, though, with just a few weeks until our second child was due, I dreamt of a vibrant and intense little girl, with long curly hair. It was thrilling to see her. And though Elaine and I had purposefully kept ourselves in the dark about our new baby's sex, when I awoke I knew that I had dreamt of our daughter.

Erin was born about a week later.

That's Nirbachita, me and Jeevan, above, at my graduation from the Monterey Institute in May 1998.

Re-Awakening

2008-12-25T12:17:00.000-08:00

I loved my time at the Monterey Institute.

Part of that, of course, was the loose structure of student life. In almost four years in the Navy, I shaved every weekday and not only never missed a day of work, but was never even late for a day of work. The pace of student life was just much more relaxed. As a bonus, I loved what I was studying: international trade, national security issues, economics. My mind was like a sponge in the way it soaked up information.

That summer (1996), I began studying Japanese at the Institute's summer language intensive -- five days a week of full-time Japanese immersion. I loved that, too, though the pace of instruction was brisk. From that point forward, language studies were an integral part of my coursework through the following fall and into the New Year.

I spent my second summer (1997) at the Institute just as I had my first: at the summer Japanese language intensive. As I had been doing for the past year, I memorized Kanji characters from flash cards as I walked over the hill to and from school each day. My only respite from study came at lunch time, when I got the chance to hit the gym and let my mind relax.

After working out, but before heading back to school, I usually stopped at a local deli -- Troia's Market -- for lunch. It was there, that summer, that I experienced a re-awakening.

I had just gotten my sandwich and stepped outside. As I began walking back to school, I felt a solid wall of joy permeating my consciousness. It seemed to emanate from my heart, forehead, and my surroundings at the same time.

Joy, perhaps, isn't the most precise description of what I felt that afternoon. Joy suggests happiness and what I felt that day was not mere happiness. Maybe bliss is a better word for it. In short, the flame had been re-kindled.

I've written before about how the psychic flame that had dominated my life in the Center had become like a pilot light thereafter -- always noticeable if I focused upon it, but never giving off any heat. Well, on that summer afternoon, to continue the metaphor, it was as if someone had turned up the gas. The pilot light did its job, the gas was ignited, and I felt warm.

What would this mean for my life going forward though?

My first inclination was to begin feeding the flame through meditation, and in that regard, I reverted back to the only meditation technique I'd ever known: meditating on Guru's photograph. I didn't have one though, so I dug through some old boxes until I found one of the few books by Guru that I still possessed. I flipped to the back inside pages, found Guru's picture there, and cut it out.

Then, for a few minutes before bed each night, I mentally prostrated myself before Guru and offered the burning flame of gratitude in my heart. The act was profound only in its simplicity.

I also began reacquainting myself with the spiritual classics of my youth: Swami Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi and M's The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. In fact, I ordered cassette tapes from the Vedanta Society of modern recordings of the same Bengali devotional songs once sung to and by Sri Ramakrishna himself. And on the weekends, I'd get up before dawn and meditate on the rocks at Lovers' Point in Pacific Grove. Once, I even meditated under a tree in a graveyard.

I was desperately seeking a new practice, but nothing I did was satisfactory until I began doing walking meditations. Guru had begun walking meditations in the last few years of my discipleship -- in the late 1980s or so. He'd be seated and we, the disciples, would form two lines -- boys and girls, respectively -- and then walk past him, sometimes many times, in a slow shuffle.

I don't know if the thought had occurred to me back then, but walking meditation forced the meditator to maintain some connection with the world. That innovation -- forcing the meditator to remain conscious of and be able to navigate his or her surroundings -- was significant. In terms of the ideas expressed in my post about Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, walking meditation seems to permit one to engage the properties of the right hemisphere of the brain, while still maintaining some connection with the logical, grounded left hemisphere of the brain.

In any event, at the time of my re-awakening, I wasn't in the Center and didn't have Guru to walk by. Instead, I developed my own practice and meditated upon myself as I walked to and from school each day. The technique I developed for myself turned out to be as powerful as it was simple: I began softly chanting the seed sounds or native mantras for each of the seven chakras, up and down the spine, in a circuit as I walked. (I've addressed some of these terms previously.)

I would begin at the crown of the head. Technically, some dispute whether or not the crown center is actually a chakra and I know of no seed sound for it, but Guru has suggested chanting "Supreme," his preferred term for the Divine. I always felt partial to the Indian term "Brahman" and chanted that instead. I chanted audibly, but just barely so. There was usually nobody around to hear me, but I didn't want to look like a nut.

For that first chakra, I pitched my voice low. Guru has said that the chakras are associated with the musical scale and I tried to account for this in my chanting.

Stepping up a note, I'd then focus upon my forehead and chant "Aum." Then with a higher pitch still, I'd focus on the base of my throat and chant "Ham" (with the "a" sounding like "ah"). Then on my heart center, I'd chant "Yam." Next, I'd focus on my belly button and chant "Ram." Then the groin, chanting "Vam." Finally, with a high pitched quiet voice like a pristine bell, I'd chant "Lam" while focused upon the base of my spine. Having descended the chakra ladder, I'd then climb back up, chanting each of the seed sounds again.

Like that, I'd complete two or three circuits on my morning walk to school each day. I'd then repeat the process on the way home after classes. Among other things, this new practice forced me, in a natural and spontaneous way, to incorporate the sensory world into my spiritual practice. It also had the side effect of getting me spiritually blitzed.

The final act of this synthetic movement was my weaning away from Guru's picture.

While my daily practice then consisted almost solely of chanting the seed sounds as I walked to and from school each day, for months after my re-awakening I continued to meditate upon Guru's picture each night before bed for a few minutes. The meditation consisted of nothing other than gratitude. I'd reflect upon the newly awakened flame within my heart and offer it silently to my Guru with gratitude.

As meaningful as the process was, however, looking at Guru's picture each night began to feel like a psychological crutch. It occurred to me that it was time to stand up on my own. It was with some trepidation, then, that I slid Guru's picture into a book for safekeeping after one last grateful bow.

Into Balance

2008-12-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

I'm intrigued by the experience of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, which she presents in this video. If you haven't watched it, do take the time. It's about 20 minutes long, but you'll think about it for the rest of the day and beyond.

Dr. Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who suffered from a massive stroke on the left side of her brain in 1996. Surprisingly, she found that the stroke opened her up to an entirely different -- and blissful -- experience of existence. She has since called it her "stroke of insight."

She recounts that, as a scientist, she had lived her whole life sensing the world through the left hemisphere of her brain. The left hemisphere of the brain processes sensory data in a logical, linear way. The stroke changed that for her. As a result, Dr. Bolte Taylor was forced to experience the world through the creative, intuitive right hemisphere of her brain. Her description of the experience is mystical.

What intrigued me about her talk was the idea that I was experiencing much the same journey, but in reverse. While Dr. Bolte Taylor's journey of consciousness moved from the logical left hemisphere of her brain to the intuitive right hemisphere of her brain, my journey was taking me from the intuitive right to the logical left. My years in the Center were all about the development and elevation of my right brain operations to the exclusion of the logical left (at least from a neurological point of view).

Unlike Dr. Bolte Taylor, though, the agent of change for my journey from intuitive insight to intellectual development was not the sudden physical violence of a stroke. Instead, I was moved psychologically.

Honestly, I had nowhere else to go. After nine years in the Center, I had no inclination to return to the contemplative life. And after I had spent close to three years cultivating my inner warrior only to have that dream come crashing down with my utter failure at SEAL training, intellectual development -- the left hemisphere of the brain -- seemed the only option left.

Thankfully, after three years of menial labor on the USS Nimitz, I was desperate to study and it was a great relief for me to begin classes at MIIS in January 1996. Though I was a little apprehensive that first day, I quickly settled into a routine that would sustain me for the next two and a half years.

Shortly after starting classes, my wife, two year old son, and I moved from Santa Cruz -- where we had been living with my mom -- to Monterey. From that point, I began walking back and forth to school every day.

The walk was about a mile, up one side of a hill, through the Presidio of Monterey Army Garrison, and down the other side of the hill into Monterey proper. Typically, I might have had two classes in the morning and another in the mid-afternoon. So, after my morning classes, I'd head over to the Monterey Sports Center (quite possibly the best city-run athletic center anywhere). There I began working out again in earnest, for the first time since quitting BUD/S. Twice a week I swam and three times a week I lifted weights and ran north along the Monterey coast.

On weekends, I began doing long runs out to Pebble Beach and the famous 17-Mile Drive, which always reminded me of the first time I ran there in the late 1980s with Sundar. My life was coming into balance for the first time.

As for scholastic activities, I got a job with one of the Institute's research facilities, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. CNS, as it is called, is the largest research organization in the United States devoted to tracking, reporting, and in that way preventing the spread of WMD throughout the world. For the next few years, I spent about 20 hours a week at CNS -- which is right on campus -- reviewing papers and journals for articles reporting about the trade of ballistic missiles in and around Asia.

I also began studying Japanese. My initial plan had been to study Arabic, but at some point between leaving the Navy and starting school I realized that to really perfect my language acquisition I would have to spend time living in the area of study and I didn't think Elaine -- who is Jewish -- would feel comfortable if we moved to Syria, for example. Plus, I'd always felt some affinity for Japan. Between the ages of five and 12, I had studied Judo at a traditional dojo (Santa Clara Judo Club run by Sensei Tosh Higashi).

With that, my formal journey into the logical left hemisphere of my brain began. My life entered a state of relative equilibrium that I hadn't experienced in a long time, if ever. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was building a solid intellectual foundation that was to support the reemergence of my psychic being in the very near future.