included Gurumayi enlisting others to join her in
the attacks against me, she instructed me to
leave the ashram and return to live and work in
New York City. In accordance with the
mercurial way that Gurumayi typically behaved,
I was still asked to do a good deal of work for
the ashram after my expulsion. For 2 more
years, I remained in good favor with the guru
and was even given a cherished, front-row seat
at public satsangs, programs in which Gurumayi
spoke to large audiences and accepted offerings.
In the next 2 years after I had moved out of the
ashram, was scrambling to make a living, and
was still thinking of myself as a follower of
Gurumayi, I did a good deal of soul searching,
much of it through the process of psychotherapy.
One use I made of psychotherapy was to explore
my career options. My work in the ashram had
been at my own expense until my funds ran out,
after which I lived on a very small stipend. My
parents had passed away, there was no family
money, and I was earning a living doing word
processing as a temp at law firms. Inspired by
the work I was doing in therapy, I eventually
chose to seek the necessary education and
training to become a psychotherapist myself.
In my first social-work field placement, many of
the clients I was assigned described terrible
histories of physical, sexual, and emotional
abuse in childhood in some cases, they were
involved in ongoing abuse, either as perpetrators
or victims. Many of these clients were
struggling to recover from devastating
addictions. Although my own life had been
something of a bed of roses in comparison with
the suffering these people had known—my life
was not without trauma, but it certainly had not
had the poverty and violence my social-work
clients reported—I soon discovered I had a
deeper connection to their experiences of trauma
and abuse than I at first realized.
I had always portrayed my participation in
SYDA Yoga, both to myself and to others, as an
idealistic commitment to a noble spiritual path, a
dedication to spiritual awakening and uplift in
the world. Just after graduate school began, I
learned of an incident concerning a friend of
mine, a young woman just turned 21, who was
sexually harassed in the ashram by one of its
most powerful male leaders—a man in his late
forties who was notoriously seductive, and who
years ago had pled no contest to statutory rape in
the one instance when the parents of a teenage
girl he had seduced took action against him.
When the young woman friend of mine sought
help from Gurumayi regarding what had
happened between her and the male leader,
Gurumayi, through her secretary, told my friend
that she had brought the harassment upon
herself. Gurumayi warned the young woman,
“Don’t ever tell anyone about this, especially not
your mother.” The young woman’s mother, an
influential leader of the Siddha Yoga community
in a large US city, was a long-time devotee of
Gurumayi’s.
After 2 years of intense inner conflict, the young
woman finally did tell her story. As a result,
many others began to speak out, eventually
contributing to an extensive exposé of SYDA
Yoga by Lis Harris in The New Yorker (Harris,
1994). The article revealed a Pandora’s box of
well-documented abuses by the leaders of the
group, abuses that had been going on for more
than twenty years. I learned later that Gurumayi
had chosen SYDA Yoga followers to become
Reiki practitioners specifically for the purpose
of doing long-distance Reiki on Lis Harris and
The New Yorker, in hopes of stopping the
publication of the article. When that effort
proved ineffective, followers around the world
made a point of finding the magazine in libraries
and tearing the article out.
In the 2 years prior to the publication of the
article that I had spent living and working back
in New York City, I had slowly and painfully
begun to acknowledge to myself, my therapist,
and my wife, herself a member of the group at
that time (but no longer), that there were aspects
of SYDA Yoga and its leaders that I found
unethical and disturbing. In particular, I had
personally experienced and also frequently
witnessed Gurumayi verbally and emotionally
abusing her followers—publicly shaming in
cruel and humiliating ways those with whom she
was displeased. I had heard her tell blatant lies
and had witnessed her deliberately, maliciously
deceiving others she wished to embarrass or
harass while she expressed pleasure in doing so.
I witnessed her condoning and encouraging
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 5, 2014 53
the attacks against me, she instructed me to
leave the ashram and return to live and work in
New York City. In accordance with the
mercurial way that Gurumayi typically behaved,
I was still asked to do a good deal of work for
the ashram after my expulsion. For 2 more
years, I remained in good favor with the guru
and was even given a cherished, front-row seat
at public satsangs, programs in which Gurumayi
spoke to large audiences and accepted offerings.
In the next 2 years after I had moved out of the
ashram, was scrambling to make a living, and
was still thinking of myself as a follower of
Gurumayi, I did a good deal of soul searching,
much of it through the process of psychotherapy.
One use I made of psychotherapy was to explore
my career options. My work in the ashram had
been at my own expense until my funds ran out,
after which I lived on a very small stipend. My
parents had passed away, there was no family
money, and I was earning a living doing word
processing as a temp at law firms. Inspired by
the work I was doing in therapy, I eventually
chose to seek the necessary education and
training to become a psychotherapist myself.
In my first social-work field placement, many of
the clients I was assigned described terrible
histories of physical, sexual, and emotional
abuse in childhood in some cases, they were
involved in ongoing abuse, either as perpetrators
or victims. Many of these clients were
struggling to recover from devastating
addictions. Although my own life had been
something of a bed of roses in comparison with
the suffering these people had known—my life
was not without trauma, but it certainly had not
had the poverty and violence my social-work
clients reported—I soon discovered I had a
deeper connection to their experiences of trauma
and abuse than I at first realized.
I had always portrayed my participation in
SYDA Yoga, both to myself and to others, as an
idealistic commitment to a noble spiritual path, a
dedication to spiritual awakening and uplift in
the world. Just after graduate school began, I
learned of an incident concerning a friend of
mine, a young woman just turned 21, who was
sexually harassed in the ashram by one of its
most powerful male leaders—a man in his late
forties who was notoriously seductive, and who
years ago had pled no contest to statutory rape in
the one instance when the parents of a teenage
girl he had seduced took action against him.
When the young woman friend of mine sought
help from Gurumayi regarding what had
happened between her and the male leader,
Gurumayi, through her secretary, told my friend
that she had brought the harassment upon
herself. Gurumayi warned the young woman,
“Don’t ever tell anyone about this, especially not
your mother.” The young woman’s mother, an
influential leader of the Siddha Yoga community
in a large US city, was a long-time devotee of
Gurumayi’s.
After 2 years of intense inner conflict, the young
woman finally did tell her story. As a result,
many others began to speak out, eventually
contributing to an extensive exposé of SYDA
Yoga by Lis Harris in The New Yorker (Harris,
1994). The article revealed a Pandora’s box of
well-documented abuses by the leaders of the
group, abuses that had been going on for more
than twenty years. I learned later that Gurumayi
had chosen SYDA Yoga followers to become
Reiki practitioners specifically for the purpose
of doing long-distance Reiki on Lis Harris and
The New Yorker, in hopes of stopping the
publication of the article. When that effort
proved ineffective, followers around the world
made a point of finding the magazine in libraries
and tearing the article out.
In the 2 years prior to the publication of the
article that I had spent living and working back
in New York City, I had slowly and painfully
begun to acknowledge to myself, my therapist,
and my wife, herself a member of the group at
that time (but no longer), that there were aspects
of SYDA Yoga and its leaders that I found
unethical and disturbing. In particular, I had
personally experienced and also frequently
witnessed Gurumayi verbally and emotionally
abusing her followers—publicly shaming in
cruel and humiliating ways those with whom she
was displeased. I had heard her tell blatant lies
and had witnessed her deliberately, maliciously
deceiving others she wished to embarrass or
harass while she expressed pleasure in doing so.
I witnessed her condoning and encouraging
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 5, 2014 53
