The Abode of Yoga

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 ...

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...

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 spiritua...

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 ...

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 s...

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 a...

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 o...