Ottavio's Story - 2/22/2007

Sometimes the mantra Om Namah Shivaya pops up unexpectedly in my mind, together with vivid memories of the time I spent in Ganeshpuri and South Fallsburg between 1990 and 1994. Nine years after leaving Siddha Yoga (1998) I still find myself evaluating the psychological cost of the damage that this experience has caused me.

Time is a healer. The old wounds don’t hurt any more, but the scars will never go away.

BEFORE SIDDHA YOGA

I had a bubbly and outgoing personality in 1989, when I first met Gurumayi in Rome. I also had a reasonable amount of self confidence. I was 26 then. I had just graduated and, being a conscientious objector, I was doing a kind of social work instead of the Military Service, which was compulsory in Italy at the time. I hated what I was doing, but that was not as bad as being in the Army. I was looking forward to completing this mandatory period of work so that I could be free to travel abroad and move to some more liberal country where the social conventions and the family ties are not as oppressive and suffocating as in Italy.

I’ve always been a free spirit and nobody ever managed to force me to do what I did not want or stop me from doing what I wanted. It hadn’t cost me the slightest effort to disappoint my father’s expectations that I should take on the family business in Milan. And to my parents’ great dismay, I couldn’t give a monkey’s about having a career or playing a prestigious role in society. I hated hanging around pretentious people who showed off their expensive Armani clothes in exclusive holiday resorts, and I liked wearing grubby jeans and hitch hiking around Europe, Marocco and India.

Without the help of any guru, my spiritual journey had already begun. Meditation was something I had discovered on my own in my late teens, and two months of travelling around India in 1987 had taught me that happiness does not depend on external circumstances, but is a state that can only be found inside ourselves.

About a year before getting involved with Siddha Yoga, one afternoon, as I was stuck writing my thesis, totally out of the blue I began to experience an incredibly intense bliss, absolute joy, as if I was being showered in divine love. It felt as if waves of energy were moving up my spine, my hair would raise and my skin would form goose bumps. I was moved and overwhelmed by a powerful sense of gratitude for everything around me, from the typewriter I was using to the pad I was writing on, or the clothes I was wearing... It could have been described as a classical shaktipat experience, but for one thing: there was no guru around to give the experience to me, it was just happening on its own. Similar and more dramatic experiences than mine happen all the time all over the world to people who never took an Intensive. So, can it be that the whole idea of shaktipat is just an invention of a self deluded group of people following a self deluded Guru? Can it be that the whole idea of the Kundalini moving up the spine to reach the top of the head is nothing but propaganda to persuade people that they need to pay $400 (if the prices haven’t gone up in the meantime) to be officially initiated? I remember taking Intensive after Intensive and having no real spiritual experience, but the group hysteria, the talks, the enthusiasm generated in the meditation hall, Gurumayi’s charisma, all made it easy for me to believe that I was undergoing a life transforming experience. And if I was feeling depressed, frustrated, angry, dejected, disappointed, doubtful and sceptical, there was a ready made explanation: the shakti was purifying me, and all the negativities and impurities were being expelled from my system, so the Intensive was working! WHAT A LOT OF BULLSHIT!

THE NERVOUS WRECK

I wrote earlier that when I started Sidday Yoga I had a reasonable amount of self confidence. Maybe this is not true, otherwise I wouldn’t have got involved with Siddha Yoga in the first place. For sure by the summer of 1994, after spending 4 years in the Ashram, I had turned into a hopeless creature with no self respect, self esteem and self reliance at all. Even for the most basic necessities of my physical existence I relied on nothing but the Guru’s grace, the shakti that could flow into my life only if I worshipped the Guru, thought constantly of the Guru, followed strictly the Guru’s teachings (and God, there were so many of them!), meditated, chanted, prayed and repeated the mantra. And to make things worse, I believed myself unworthy of the Guru’s grace because I hadn’t surrendered completely to the Guru.

Here is an example that shows the level of stupidity I had achieved:

I had been living in South Fallsburg for one and a half years when I finally found the courage to go for one day to New York to visit the city. Before Siddha Yoga, I used to hitch hike all over Europe and travelled on my own in countries like Morocco and India. Now I was worried of going for one day to New York, even if Jan, a German ashramite who had been in New York before, would be with me and show me around the City.

Now, here is the funny bit: New York has the greatest choice of restaurants and food stores in the world. Well, you may laugh about it, but I was worried about what we should find to eat there. Some of you remember the big fuss Gurumayi used to make about food; she used to deliver entire talks on the importance of eating food that had been properly purified and offered to God with devotion, gratitude, reverence etc. Many of us became obsessed with the fear of picking up bad karma from anything we ate. Now, as Jan and I were not going to New York for seva, we were not entitled to a packet lunch from the Ashram. As for having lunch at the Manhattan Ashram, that was out of the question. The only option was to eat in some restaurant and repeat the mantra while eating to avoid absorbing the huge amount of bad karma lurking in that wilderness of negativities that was New York!

There was something else that was bothering me: I was not going to New York to do some business for the Ashram, but simply to see the Empire State building, the Twin Towers, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square... basically to be a tourist. My paranoia about food was hiding a deep rooted sense of guilt: I was taking time for myself, I was taking a break from the practices, I was wasting precious time that could be better used meditating, chanting and doing seva. Wasn’t that the reason why I had come to America? Wasn’t that the primary reason why I had incarnated? I was meant to become enlightened, to become liberated, to break once for all the chain of birth and death... and I was going to New York just for fun?

Apparently the Guru’s grace actually protected us in new York, since no major catastophe befell upon us on that day, and by evening Jan and I were back in South Fallsburg, exhausted and drained after spending a day in the world.

The world... the idea used to terrorise the staff members who had spent considerable time in the Ashram. We were constantly repeated how lucky, how privileged, how fortunate we were to be allowed to live in the Guru’s home. So we gradually came to believe that couldn’t possibly be any greater misfortune than being told to go. Fear of leaving the Ashram became as terrifying as the fear of death itself. So we prayed, meditated, chanted, did extra seva with greater and greater intensity in order to generate enough shakti to keep us in the Ashram. I remember hearing this many times: "It takes so much shakti, so much grace to live in the Ashram". Or "it’s because of your good karma that you are allowed to be here". So if you were told to leave the Ashram, that meant that your good karma had run out, the Guru’s grace had forsaken you, that you had wasted that unique opportunity that had been gained after countless lifetimes... Basically, you had failed. Of course swamis and personnel didn’t put it that way, but that’s how most of us felt.

It is sad to look back and remember how I used to show sympathy to fellow ashramites who were being sent back to the world, while secretly feeling relieved that it was happening to them and not me. But I knew that my time, like everybody else’s time, sooner or later would be over. Like many others, I lived in constant fear.

THE CHASM OF DESPAIR

My turn to leave the ashram came in the summer of 1994, at a time when the SYDA Foundation, like any other corporation in the world, went through a process of restructuring and the staff was laid off. Obviously that was not the way they put it: "Your time has come for you to share with the world the treasures you’ve gained doing sadhana in the Ashram"; or "You are an instrument of the Shakti, and now you are needed in the world so that many other lives may be transformed". There was so much emphasis in the staff meetings in 1994 on Gurumayi’s global mission, of how all of us were part of it.

Anyway, my father was about to die of cancer and I asked if I could go home (of course anybody could go at any time, so asking permission to leave actually meant asking permission to come back). I gave the personnel dept. a great opportunity to get rid of yet another staff member. "Take all your belonging with you and give us a call when you are ready to come back". I knew what it meant, and when I called the Ashram from Italy after my father’s funeral to ask whether I could come back, the answer didn’t come as a surprise: "Gurumayi gives her blessing for you to continue your sadhana in the world". Had they just told me to fuck off it wouldn’t have been so painful.

I should have seen it coming, nevertheless when it happened I was devastated. My whole world fell apart, I had lost everything that mattered, I had failed, the Guru had rejected me and the first doubts about the Guru’s being an ocean of compassion and love began to creep into my heart. Still that was too hard a truth to face, so I went on deluding myself for another four years.

"It’s a test, it’s a Guru's test", the members of the local Siddha Yoga community in Milan kept repeating to me. "It’s because Gurumayi loves you so much that she puts you through all this. You should be grateful, it’s a blessing!" It’s amazing how in Siddha Yoga people used to put up with every kind of humiliation, and then felt guilty for being ungrateful for the humiliations they received! Outrageous! But you can only be outraged once you are out of it. For as long as you are in the trap, You believe that being mistreated, bullied, humiliated, deprived of your basic human dignity by the Guru and her cronies is a great blessing, because you are being liberated from your ego! Extraordinary.

Anyway, after spending 4 years in the ashram I was completely brainwashed. I was no longer my old self, but a walking tape player that repeated Siddha Yoga teachings and philosophy. I couldn’t manage a simple conversation with anybody without trying to persuade them to try the life transforming power of Siddha Yoga and to experience the Guru’s grace. I had turned into a religious fanatic like the Jehovah witnesses or some born again Christians and Muslim fundamentalists. I just didn’t go as far as knocking at people’s doors. That wouldn’t have been in line with the code of conduct of a Siddha Yogi anyway.

At the time the PR Dep. was going out of its way to present Siddha Yoga as anything but the cult that it really was was. Obviously the SYDA Foundation bosses had realised the staff members had become so indoctrinated that, once released into the world, they would discredit the organisation with their weird behaviour and scare away any new potential members. So the "Outreach Department" organised a workshop entitled "Sharing Siddha Yoga with family and friends". The focus of the workshop was to train us to deal confidently with claims from family and friends that we had been caught up in a cult. It also provided guidelines for behaviour, such as avoiding repeating the mantra aloud while with other people or simply acting like lunatics. Still the pressure to involve other people remained. We were reminded that we were part of a global mission, that we were instrument of the Guru’s grace, so that more lives could be transformed.

It’s amazing how people who belong to religious groups are so keen to convert others. Somehow deep inside themselves they question the validity of their creed. So they try to involve others. If they succeed, it proves to them that what they are following is right, and this reinforces their faith in the path. It also confers on them a status inside the group, as if they scored points for every person they introduce to the community. The group they belong to becomes the centre of their life, it gives them a feeling of identity and belonging, especially after after all the family ties and friendships have been broken.

I remember hearing a video talk from Gurumayi in which she talked about the importance of good company and the detrimental effects of bad company. Basically bad company was any person who is not interested in God. I took this teaching to the letter, so when I was back in Milan the relationship with my family became very tense, I refused to have anything to do with people who were not in Siddha Yoga - or I tried to convert to Siddha Yoga any nice person I wanted as a friend. The local Siddha Yoga community became the centre of my life. I attended every single program, workshop and meeting; I did seva at the centre as well as at home; I listened to nothing but Siddha Yoga chants, studied religiously the Siddha Yoga Correspondence Course and read nothing but Siddha Yoga literature. I avoided watching TV or reading newspapers for fear of picking up negativities. I got up every morning at 4 o’clock to chant the Gurugita and meditate, and tried to repeat the mantra 24 hours a day. I used all my holidays and savings to go back to South Fallsburg whenever I could (3 times between 1995 and 1997) and followed Gurumayi’s tour in Europe in 1996. Unfortunately I had to make a living, which meant going to work and dealing with normal people. Would you be surprised if I told you that in any work situation I was met by hostility and animosity?

THE AWAKENING

For four years after leaving the Ashram I clung with all my energy to Siddha Yoga, spiralling deeper and deeper into despair. The more I suffered, the more I persisted, convinced as I was that I was doing sadhana, tapasya, burning karma, and all that crap. Finally, in the spring of 1998, after totally succeeding in making myself really miserable, something happened. I call it my awakening, not the spiritual awakening Gurumayi talks about, but the awakening to the guru-free life.

I had been living in London for just over a year and I was about to take a two weeks holiday. Nowhere glamorous, of course, just going to visit my sister in Nice, then travel by train to Milan, spend a few days with my mother, and finally go to Switzerland for the Siddha Yoga European retreat in Montreux. I had already booked the air tickets from London to Nice and from Geneva to London, and just a few days before my holiday I had a nasty confrontation at work with a horrible bitch who had been bullying me for a while. Unfortunately I was the one who over reacted and lost his temper, and she in turn retaliated and started to throw objects at me. There wasn’t any attack, but when the management investigated the incident, I was accused of assault and dismissed for gross misconduct.

This incident opened my eyes. It forced me to face so many inconvenient truths I had been denying for ages, such as the fact that after nine years of Siddha Yoga I was nothing more than a self deluded neurotic, and no matter where I went, I always attracted anger, hostility, animosity, even hatred, like a magnet. Things simply did not work, I was deeply unhappy, miserable, depressed, dysfunctional, unable to relate to people without rubbing them the wrong way, isolated, lost and lonely.

"The Guru’s always with you, the Guru never leaves you". So many times I’ve heard this. What a lot of bollocks. Where was the Guru when I lost my temper and got sacked? Why didn’t the Guru protect me? Why didn’t the Guru stop me from behaving in such an inappropriate way? Then I was finally abel to ask myself the crucial question: What sort of fantasy is that? How can possibly the Guru help me? Gurumayi is peacefully sitting on her chair in South Fallsburg, surrounded by a few selected privileged devotees whom she allows to to hang around. She doesn’t have any clue of what is going on with me right now. How could she? Who is she, after all? Someone who simply sits quietly in front of thousands of enraptured people while swamis and exalted speakers talk of her extraordinary powers and claim that she is a saint, an enlightened being, a perfected master who has become one with God, the grace-bestowing-power of God in human form, and so on and so on... But what do I really know about her?

A memory came to my mind, an incident that happened two years before, when I actually saw Gurumayi for what she really was. It was during the European tour of 1996, and Gurumayi had just given an Intensive in a theatre in the Polish city of Lodz. The usual Darshan scene was going on, with Gurumayi on her chair lavishing smiles upon the hundreds of Eastern European devotees who were meeting her for the fist time. Each one of them was being made feel very special, just I had been made feel very special when I first met her years before in Rome. When Darshan was over, she stood up and went backstage, followed by the darshan girl. I happened to be there, unnoticed by her, and caught a very quick glimpse of her as she gestured with impatience and ran away, as if what she had just done disgusted her, as if she was sick and fed up of acting the role of the benevolent Guru in front of all those mystified people who looked at her with tears in their eyes if she was God. At the time I when it happened, I didn’t give much importance to this incident. I even sympathised with Gurumayi for the incredible effort she was making, but now that I was going through a crisis, the memory of this incident showed me Gurumayi in a different light.

When I first started Siddha Yoga, the purpose was to improve the quality of my life by liberating myself from the conditionings (religious, social, psychological, any kind of conditioning) that hindered me from experiencing my own self, and become completely free. The Guru was there to facilitate this process. Something along the way had gone horribly wrong. Of Siddha Yoga I ended up making a religion that enslaved me, and of Gyrumayi I had created an idol to whom I had given away all my power, and whom I was now begging for compassion. Someone might well say that I got it all wrong and that it was all my fault. Maybe I lacked the "right understanding" Gurumayi always talked about, but I wasn’t the only one. So many other people more clever and intelligent than me had made exactly the same mistake. Why was that? The answer came a week later.

For the first time in nine years I decided to suspend the practices: no more meditation, no more chanting, no begging of Guru’s grace before undertaking any kind of activity. I went ahead with my holiday as I had planned. I flew to Nice. As I said before, since coming back from the ashram the relationship with my family had been quite tense, and I was worried about meeting my sister, with whom there had been a few unpleasant arguments. On this occasion we got on very well and we started healing our relationship. Was it a coincidence?

I kept refraining from meditating, chanting and repeating the mantra, and continued my journey to Milan, where I spent a few pleasant days with my mother, my aunt and my other sister. They were pleased to see me more relaxed and "human" than they had got used to see me. Another coincidence?

In Milan I got in touch with the devotees I had arranged to go to Switzerland with, but my heart was not in it.

One afternoon I popped into a New Age bookshop and browsed around. Of all books on display, only one caught my attention. The title read something like "Cults: how to free yourself and others", from a Swiss author whose name I forgot. I bought it and read it avidly. There was no reference to Gurumayi or Siddha Yoga in it, but it described very meticulously the way in which cults like Scientology, Hare Krishna, the Moonies and other fanatical Christian sects brainwash and indoctrinate people. And I was shocked to realise that I had gone through exactly the same process in Siddha Yoga.

So that was it. Enough was enough. I called my friends and told them I had changed my mind and I was not going to Switzerland. I flew back to London instead.

I remember how happy I felt walking down Oxford Street a couple of days later, as i felt hungry, walked into a McDonald, bought a portion of chips and ate them walking in the crowd, thinking: "Fuck it! I don’t give a damn about negativities, impurities and all this sort of crap! I don’t have to attain anything, I’m free to achieve nothing. I’ve got no Guru to please, no Shakti to protect, no mantra to repeat, lots of extra free time now that I’m no longer going to meditate and chant that bleeding Gurugita. I’m going to spend all my money on me rather than taking intensives or giving it away as dakshina to the bloody Guru. I’m free, I’m free, I’m free!"

AFTER SIDDHA YOGA

I still remember that grey spring afternoon in Oxford Street as a very happy moment in my life. What followed was a new honeymoon with my rediscovered old self and a long process of chucking away dysfunctional concepts, ideas, set of believes and compulsive behaviours picked up during nine years of intense brainwashing - and the process isn’t finished yet! I rediscovered the simple pleasures of having friends, going for a beach holiday, watching movies (so much nicer to watch an old black & white tear jerker from Bette Davis instead of a tedious video of Gurumayi!); instead of listening to chants, I play Westlife, Bacharach & David, Doris Day and Judy Garland (you must have guessed my sexual orientation by now; obviously I was in the closet at the time of Siddha Yoga. I deluded myself thinking that I was a celibate, a yogi, a monk). I live my sexuality now, I don’t chase divine love, because I’m perfectly content with the limited, ordinary human love with all its ups and downs, attachments and dramas. I’m pleased to be an ordinary human being, without the burden of having to achieve perfection. I enjoy throwing tantrums whenever things are not the way I want and I don’t think twice to blame people and situations for everything that’s wrong with my life. I‘ve got the right to survive, after all: I don’t want to die under the weight of too many responsibilities!

I’ve also learnt to to love, protect and cherish - guess what? - my Ego! Yes, I do love my Ego. What’s wrong with it? We need an ego to function in the physical world, and those who claim they want to free us from our Ego, are only after one thing: they want full control of our lives, they want to exploit and manipulate. Don’t let those bastards get away with it!