NEW, 2024: A legal complaint against SYDA, for sexual abuse of a minor by Swami Muktananda, was filed recently and is available to be viewed in the What’s New Section. The SYDA Foundation response is also filed. The date below will be updated any time there is new information available, and the new info will be found in the What’s New Section.
If you have visited this page previously, you may press HERE to continue~ Content Last Updated:
July 2nd, 2024. See the “What’s New” section for latest updates.
See special announcement about statute of limitations for abuse claims HERE
This website was started in July 1996 by “Pendragon” to provide information about the problems in Siddha Yoga, past and present.
Siddha Yoga is the organization started by Swami Muktananda and now controlled by Swami Chidvilasananda, also known as Gurumayi. Siddha Yoga is the religious organization governed by the SYDA Foundation.
This site points to several concrete abuses in Siddha Yoga, such as predatory sexual abuse and pedophilia by Swami Muktananda and other Siddha Yoga leaders, and the long term stalking and harassment of Gurumayi’s rival, her brother Swami Nityananda. In the What’s New section of this site, you can read about the lawsuit recently filed (November, 2023) against SYDA by victims of Muktananda’s pedophilia; and also first hand accounts of that abuse by two different women. While these concrete abuses are the most immediately recognizable, and perhaps the most egregious and repugnant, there are also other, more subtle ways that we believe Siddha Yoga abuses its followers. As you read the stories and articles here, it is our hope that you can see that Siddha Yoga creates dependence, not liberation, in its followers, and requires its members to live in dissociative denial, pushing truth away. Critical thinking and questioning is punished by banishment from the community. Suppression and falsification of truth, submissive dependence, and acceptance of one’s insufficiency as a human being compared to the perfection of the guru, is rewarded. We believe that induction into this masochistic state of submission is the universal harm done to Siddha Yoga followers. Sexual abuse, illegal activities and other forms of harmful exploitation are just some of the concrete manifestations of this demand for submission to the control of the guru and her group.
Some ask, isn’t all the wrongdoing in the past, and haven’t those who did wrong in the past left Siddha Yoga? The answers, respectively, are no, and no. Even if it were the case that Siddha Yoga had “cleaned up its act,” which is not the case, the retrospective falsification of Siddha Yoga’s history has been undertaken systematically by its leaders, and this is a wrongdoing happening now. The failure to openly confess and apologize for: 1) extensive sexual abuses by Muktananda, and other Siddha Yoga leaders; and 2) the more than ten year vendetta orchestrated by Gurumayi against her brother, including world wide stalking and harassing (which some say continues to this day), — is a profound moral and ethical failure, a wrongdoing happening now, for which Gurumayi is ultimately responsible. Her refusal to accept this responsibility, to take appropriate actions to make reparations and apologies, is a wrongdoing happening right now. The demand that followers ignore and deny the truth of Siddha Yoga’s history, and Gurumayi’s inability to recognize how submission and dependence, indeed, psychological enslavement, is created in and demanded of her followers, is a wrongdoing happening now.
The dissociative contagion that allows the organization to sweep its history of corruption and abuse under the rug is the means by which evil has always been perpetrated and perpetuated. It is the means by which those who participate in Siddha Yoga become unwitting accomplices to the ongoing deception and exploitation of its members and of the public. It is our hope that this website is a place where the truth can be told without fear, so that those who have been harmed by Siddha Yoga in the past may find healing, and others considering joining Siddha Yoga may be helped to make an informed decision.
We are providing these pages as both a resource center and as a place to share all of our stories. You’ll find many of the published articles related to Siddha Yoga, links to the AOL discussion archives, and personal stories from people like yourself. We welcome your contributions to these pages.
All the material presented here is the personal opinion of that individual.
Effective 12 Nov 01, Pendragon has retired from LSY and the site will be run by Daniel Shaw.
Daniel Shaw lived and worked full time as a Siddha Yoga staff member from 1985 to 1992. I was known as Sureshwar, and my various duties included Manager of the Manhattan Ashram, Manager of several Siddha Yoga Manadali tours, Director of Programming, Advance Tour Manager, etc. Since exiting Siddha Yoga in 1994, I have written about my experience in Siddha Yoga in my essay, Traumatic Abuse in Cults – A Psychoanalytic Perspective and in my book Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation published by Routledge. I learned many things of value from my ashram experience – for example, I learned how to use computers and I learned touch typing. I live in Nyack, New York.
You may e-mail me at danielshawlcsw@gmail.com and view my website at http:/www.danielshawlcsw.com.
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