Siddha Yoga - History

History

Swami Muktananda's spiritual teacher, Bhagawan Nityananda, has been widely regarded throughout India as a Siddha Guru and as an Avadhut since the mid-20th century. Born in South India, he first came to Ganeshpuri, a small village located 82 kilometers north of Mumbai, in 1936, settling there in a small hut built for him by the caretakers of the local Shiva temple. As his visitors and devotees increased in number, the hut expanded into an ashram.

In his autobiography, The Play of Consciousness, Muktananda describes how he received shaktipat initiation from Nityananda on August 15, 1947, and how he attained God-realization or moksha after nine more years of sadhana and discipleship.

Nityananda installed Muktananda in a small three-room dwelling in Gavdevi, a mile from Ganeshpuri. After his death in 1961, Nityananda's Ganeshpuri ashram was converted into a samadhi shrine and has subsequently become a renowned temple and pilgrimage site. Under Swami Muktananda's leadership the three-room dwelling in Gavdevi also expanded into a flourishing ashram and international retreat site (Sri Gurudev Ashram, now Gurudev Siddha Peeth).

In 1975 Swami Muktananda founded the Oakland Ashram in the California Bay Area, and in 1976 he established Shree Nityananda Ashram (now Shree Muktananda Ashram) in the Catskills Mountains, a resort area north of New York City. His fame increased to the point that he was made the subject of a New York magazine article ("Hanging out with the Guru") and a Time magazine article ("Instant Energy"), both in 1976.

One of Swami Muktananda's earliest and principal disciples was Malti Shetty, a young woman from Mumbai who accompanied him as his English language interpreter on his second and third World Tours. In May 1982, Swami Muktananda installed Ms. Shetty (now known as Gurumayi Chidvilasananda or Gurumayi) and her brother Subhash Shetty (now known as Mahamandaleshwar Nityananda) as co-Gurus and spiritual leaders of Siddha Yoga. Swami Muktananda died on October 2, 1982.

In 1983 William Rodarmor wrote an article for the CoEvolution Quarterly charging that Muktananda had engaged in behavior at odds with his own teachings and with wider societal norms. In 1985, Mahamandaleshwar Swami Nityananda stepped down amid controversy and soon started his own organization, Shanti Mandir. Swami Chidvilasananda continued in her appointed role and has been the sole spiritual leader of Siddha Yoga since then. Lis Harris repeated and extended Rodarmor's allegations in an article in The New Yorker (1994). In 1996 former devotees started a website entitled 'Leaving Siddha Yoga' to express their grievances against Siddha Yoga. An article by Sarah Caldwell in the academic journal Nova Religio (2001) argued that Muktananda was both an enlightened spiritual teacher and a covert practitioner of an esoteric form of Tantric sexual yoga.

Swami Chidvilasananda has expanded the philanthropic work initiated by Swami Muktananda. In 1992 she founded the PRASAD Project, an independent, not-for-profit, charitable organization dedicated to providing impoverished communities in India with medical care, dental care, eye care, nutrition, education and community development. In 1997 she established the Muktabodha Institute, an independent non-profit foundation with its own publishing imprint, Agama Press, to foster and encourage the preservation and study of the ancient philosophical texts of India.