Finding and Losing My Religion
Daniel Shaw
Psychoanalyst, Private Practice, New York City and Nyack, NY Faculty and Clinical Supervisor,
The National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP)
Abstract
The author provides a personal account of his
own experience in a group he came to view as
cultic. In addition to identifying the abusive
characteristics of the group’s leader, the author
explores, in retrospect, the ways in which his
participation hinged on his ability to dissociate
his awareness of a long list of abuses he not only
witnessed, but also experienced firsthand.
When I began graduate school in social work in
September of 1994, it had been just 2 years since
I moved out of the ashram, the spiritual
community in which I had lived and worked for
more than ten years, up until my 40th birthday.
In the Hindu tradition, an ashram is a retreat
compound that is the communal home of a guru,
a teacher who is worshipped as a living saint,
where followers come to pray, meditate, chant,
and work together. My ex-guru, known
formally as Swami Chidvilasananda, but most
often called Gurumayi, maintained ashrams in
India and in upstate New York, as well as in
other locations in the United States, and she also
toured extensively throughout the world.
Gurumayi’s ashram in India is the one Elizabeth
Gilbert wrote of in her bestseller, Eat, Pray,
Love (Gilbert, 2006).
Gurumayi, meaning Mother Teacher, reflects the
devotional aspect (in Sanskrit, bhakti) of this
guru’s community. Her organization is known
as Siddha Yoga, with Siddha referring to a
perfected, fully enlightened spiritual master. So
the yoga, or spiritual journey, one embarks on
under the tutelage of this guru is advertised as
the journey that leads from perfect unfailing
devotion to the guru, to perfect spiritual
enlightenment. Because siddha is not a
proprietary term of this particular community, I
will refer to it by the acronym for the foundation
that forms the group’s legal structure, which is
SYDA, standing for Siddha Yoga Dham (or
home) of America.
At the height of Gurumayi’s popularity in the
mid-’80s, thousands of visitors, swept up in the
excitement of the growing New Age movement,
flocked to weekend retreats at her ashrams to
receive spiritual awakening. I was introduced to
SYDA by friends, and my initial experiences
were of powerfully deep meditation states and
extraordinary feelings of ecstatic connectedness.
At a crossroads in my life and uncertain of how
to shape my own future, I soon asked to become
a full-time worker for SYDA and was accepted.
This meant I was given room and board in
SYDA facilities and a small monthly stipend,
and that I abandoned my prior activities and
relationships, living and working as an ashramite
24/7. I worked this way over a period of more
than ten years as a spokesperson, community
manager, meditation teacher, public-relations
director, and director of educational programs in
the US ashrams and in extensive travels to the
group’s many international centers all around
the globe. I had been successful in
strengthening and expanding the devotee
communities I was sent to visit—organizational
work for which I was praised by Gurumayi. As
a result, I was given more and more managerial
responsibility in the last few years of my time in
the ashram, and I became one of the relatively
small group of followers who were granted
extensive direct contact with the guru.
One day, some small thing I casually said while
speaking with Gurumayi and some other staff
members—I said a few words in defense of
someone whom Gurumayi was berating—
suddenly changed everything. From then on,
Gurumayi began speaking to me with searing
contempt and derision. After 6 months of being
exposed to her relentless, caustic denigration—
face to face, in written notes, and on the
phone—and after almost daily episodes of
public excoriation and humiliation, which
52 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 5, 2014
Daniel Shaw
Psychoanalyst, Private Practice, New York City and Nyack, NY Faculty and Clinical Supervisor,
The National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP)
Abstract
The author provides a personal account of his
own experience in a group he came to view as
cultic. In addition to identifying the abusive
characteristics of the group’s leader, the author
explores, in retrospect, the ways in which his
participation hinged on his ability to dissociate
his awareness of a long list of abuses he not only
witnessed, but also experienced firsthand.
When I began graduate school in social work in
September of 1994, it had been just 2 years since
I moved out of the ashram, the spiritual
community in which I had lived and worked for
more than ten years, up until my 40th birthday.
In the Hindu tradition, an ashram is a retreat
compound that is the communal home of a guru,
a teacher who is worshipped as a living saint,
where followers come to pray, meditate, chant,
and work together. My ex-guru, known
formally as Swami Chidvilasananda, but most
often called Gurumayi, maintained ashrams in
India and in upstate New York, as well as in
other locations in the United States, and she also
toured extensively throughout the world.
Gurumayi’s ashram in India is the one Elizabeth
Gilbert wrote of in her bestseller, Eat, Pray,
Love (Gilbert, 2006).
Gurumayi, meaning Mother Teacher, reflects the
devotional aspect (in Sanskrit, bhakti) of this
guru’s community. Her organization is known
as Siddha Yoga, with Siddha referring to a
perfected, fully enlightened spiritual master. So
the yoga, or spiritual journey, one embarks on
under the tutelage of this guru is advertised as
the journey that leads from perfect unfailing
devotion to the guru, to perfect spiritual
enlightenment. Because siddha is not a
proprietary term of this particular community, I
will refer to it by the acronym for the foundation
that forms the group’s legal structure, which is
SYDA, standing for Siddha Yoga Dham (or
home) of America.
At the height of Gurumayi’s popularity in the
mid-’80s, thousands of visitors, swept up in the
excitement of the growing New Age movement,
flocked to weekend retreats at her ashrams to
receive spiritual awakening. I was introduced to
SYDA by friends, and my initial experiences
were of powerfully deep meditation states and
extraordinary feelings of ecstatic connectedness.
At a crossroads in my life and uncertain of how
to shape my own future, I soon asked to become
a full-time worker for SYDA and was accepted.
This meant I was given room and board in
SYDA facilities and a small monthly stipend,
and that I abandoned my prior activities and
relationships, living and working as an ashramite
24/7. I worked this way over a period of more
than ten years as a spokesperson, community
manager, meditation teacher, public-relations
director, and director of educational programs in
the US ashrams and in extensive travels to the
group’s many international centers all around
the globe. I had been successful in
strengthening and expanding the devotee
communities I was sent to visit—organizational
work for which I was praised by Gurumayi. As
a result, I was given more and more managerial
responsibility in the last few years of my time in
the ashram, and I became one of the relatively
small group of followers who were granted
extensive direct contact with the guru.
One day, some small thing I casually said while
speaking with Gurumayi and some other staff
members—I said a few words in defense of
someone whom Gurumayi was berating—
suddenly changed everything. From then on,
Gurumayi began speaking to me with searing
contempt and derision. After 6 months of being
exposed to her relentless, caustic denigration—
face to face, in written notes, and on the
phone—and after almost daily episodes of
public excoriation and humiliation, which
52 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 5, 2014
