This topic may be worth a thread in its own right. Readers, please feel free to add your own information.

Gurumayi SYDA Yoga

ritualsofdisenchantment.blogspot.com/.../so-sad-so-terribly-terribly-sad-e...

Dec 4, 2011 - Imagine sitting in a program mid-90s and hearing Gurumayi speak about the ... do what I have done all along, use what works for me and discard what does not. .... The history of older devotees put out to pasture is shameful.

comments following Rolling Stone feature story on Ammachi

[www.rollingstone.com]
•a year ago

Gitasun, Mooda and Marnie,
thank you for your recent posts, which I read with interest.
During my visit to the ashram in 2012 I did seeva in the swimming pool. I did meet some very sad, lost and confused elderly Western renunciates souls, who shared with me their fear of their uncertain future there. They would need a rescue missionary to get them out and bring them back to the West to go to some Psychiatric Asylum to get treatment to wake up from their believe that she is a "godwoman". However they have broken all bridges and are moneyless and totally dependent. The same is true for Sai Baba devotees; now that he has left many are totally lost but still believe that he is the "godman" and they prepare for his next incarnation. From me they wont get one more rupee.

Phillip> Adriana Auderset
•a year ago

aah.....adriana. I certainly would not look forward to the alternative of waiting to die in a lonely slow death in a nursing home in the west.

Marnie> Adriana Auderset
•a year ago

Yes Adriana that is the truly most sad thing in this whole situation. The many ageing western devotees who made the decision to live in the ashram as renunciates. Having handed over large amounts of cash to initially pay for living there. Having been encouraged to sever their ties with family and friends in their countries of origin. Some, if they are lucky, still have small incomes from pensions or investments back home. But many do not even have that. They are well and truly trapped as old age comes upon them. And indeed an uncertain future. Because the reality is that once Amma is deceased there is no guarantee that those who control the MA Math funds will even want to continue supporting them. Especially if they are no longer considered productive workers, unable to put in the long hours of seva required.

Many of Amma's supporters on this site have asked why more long term devotees living in Amma's ashram do not speak up about any abuses they know of. How could you if you were a long term ashram resident living there under those circumstances? Only those who are cashed up and make the decision to leave could actually do so. Because you certainly could not speak out if you lived there.

Then there are those who have qualifications and the possibility of restarting a career again in the west after some initial struggles if they are not too old. Who probably feel a sense of embarrassment when they are back in the west, interfacing all the time with non-Amma people, in even wanting to talk about it, lest their work colleagues think they are weird. Who, having reconstructed their lives again, just want to walk away from it all.

Some of the householders who lived in the ashram with their families for decades have the parents wanting to finally leave and possibly even speak up. However their children, who spent their formative years in the ashram, are still committed to Amma. So if the parents leave how can they speak up, knowing their children are still living there.

I think many of the western devotees who have never visited the ashram, or who have only had a brief visit, just have NO idea. They are very passionate in their support of Amma, but have only really had the sanitised western tour version of her organisation. You have to actually go to India, talk to some of these people as you did, and experience life there at first hand to know how things truly are.

In the west you can belong to a local satsang group and meet every week in some very pleasant upper middle class devotee house filled with Amma pictures, incense and candles and it is all very uplifting and light and social. You bring food to share for prasad and form social networks and have fun together helping with a few fundraisers and some seva in the lead up to Amma's tour. But its all voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate all the time.

Unlike the poor souls in her ashram who are indeed seva slaves. Compelled to work seven days a week once they become renunciates. Often at jobs with bad health and safety conditions.

When you go there as a young person, in good health and full of energy and enthusiasm it can be real fun. I met lots of young people who were having a wonderful time. Socialising with others, networking, staying up late during the darshans. A bit like an endless party for them. If you are a young householder couple it can also be good. You get your own room as a couple so have a semblance of normality in your life - and some privacy.

It was the aged women more than anything that I really felt sorry for. And not just the western women. For an Indian woman without a father, husband or son to accommodate and support her life can be really terrifying. An Indian woman who has lived a long time as a renunciate will most likely NEVER find a husband if she leaves. She then faces the prospect of being shunted between her male relatives, a burden to them, childless with no one to support her in her old age. Could even end up begging on the streets.

No one talks much about the fate of the Sai Baba devotees who lived in his various ashrams as renunciates. Someone provided a link to a news article below about how his home town where the big centre is was becoming a ghost town. I just wonder if in the sordid struggles which have become public over his vast fortune, any provision has even been made for these people?

For the sake of Amma's ageing ashram residents I just hope she lives a VERY long time!

Corboy: The one area I disagree is with the person stating that one has to give permission to surrender oneself to a guru-takeover.

One has been placed in a state of boundry porosity and, very likely trance by the events one goes through at an ashram prior to the guru's arrival onstage.

Two, that pre-darshan indoctrination is designed to disrupt adult critical thinking and to stimulate the trusting longing child who lives within us all.

This indoctrination separates our trustful inner child from our street wise inner parent, leaving that child self within us vulnerable to seduction by an exploitative ashram business.

We are not told about the exploitative business model concealed behind the sweet singing and incense.

In such a state of mind, one might as well be drugged or drunk. It is impossible to 'give permission' when in this state of mind.

This said, the author's story is well worth reading.

The astonishing experiences people undergo in ashram communities and during guru events may be accounted for by a subconscious undertow that occurs when a multitude of longing people have all focused that longing upon a single person, and in an environment that promotes boundary fluidity.

[forum.culteducation.com]

[brontebaxter.wordpress.com]

Quote

here is no doubt that group behaviour has a powerful effect on the human psyche. Mass displays of emotion (or hysteria) are contagious. Human beings have an innate yearning to belong to a tribe – any tribe – and Amma’s ashram can tick the empty boxes for lost souls seeking meaning to their lives, whether consciously sought or not. But there is more to Amma’s powerful hold over people’s minds and lives than simple group conformity. Someone commented earlier that a soul surrender takes place. That’s a good way of describing it. You could also say it’s a form of spiritual possession. It’s important to stress that that can only happen with the PERMISSION of the individual.

16 years ago I thought I had been enlightened; touched in a special way by divine, cosmic forces; specifically chosen… That dangerous line of thinking led me to divorce my rationalist, scientific husband (whom I thought “would not understand the new me”), give up what I saw as vain and futile materialism and follow what I believed to be a “spiritual” path, “following my heart”. My family and friends noticed the changes – it was impossible not to. Some were too alarmed or confused to deal with it and withdrew their friendship. Others, the more concerned ones, warned me: “do you really know what you’re doing?” Yes, yes, I reassured them (and myself). I know things you don’t know. I’ve seen something you’ve not seen, something other-worldly. I’ve seen THE INFINITE in Amma’s eyes. Gabble, gabble.

Yet true good can only lead to good. And what followed in my life was not good. Today, 16 years later, I am not married any more and probably never will be again. I am childless and too old now to change that. I have no family or real friends left. I have no home of my own any more, no job, no income, no future. All I have to look forward to is old age, poverty, loneliness and then death. And then what?

There has to be more to this life than what happens here on earth, otherwise it is all pointless. I don’t believe in the endless wheel of reincarnation – that’s a get-out clause for moral irresponsibility (“doesn’t matter if you screw up this time, you’ll get another chance”). No we won’t. We have one lifetime on earth and one only. The decisions of our youth shape our later life. So, kids, take heed before it’s too late.

When I think back to that innocent boat journey I took that day through the tropical backwaters of Kerala, I liken it to the fateful journey of Captain Willard’s character in the classic Vietnam film, Apocalypse Now. Like Willard (played by Martin Sheen) I did not know that the river was taking me directly into the Heart of Darkness. I’m not comparing Amma to the mad, evil Colonel Kurtz. Nor am I blaming Amma for my own poorly conceived life decisions and mistakes. But I am talking about the journey into one’s own heart, the encounter with the deepest darkest recesses of Self. That’s what Amma unlocks in people’s hearts.

The moral of my story is: if you go knocking on an unknown door out of idle curiosity, be careful of what lies on the other side.

Thank you, Bronte Baxter, for this blog.