Siddha Yoga, Anthropology And The Human Quest

Transcription

1 Siddha Yoga, Anthropology And The Human Quest Kanu Sandra Dunn Paul J. Magnarella University of Florida Humanistic and existential conceptualizations of humankind have emerged as a "third force" in psychology during the past several decades. To a significant degree, they represent reactions to mechanical psychoanalytic 1 and behavioristic viewpoints which fail to focus sufficiently on the existential problems or the full potentialities of people. Today, problems of depersonalization, loneliness, and alienation along with the quest for identity and meaningful existence have come to characterize people in a world increasingly dominated by computerized technology, impersonal bureaucracy, and materialism. The various humanistic existential therapies share a disdain for the "psychological engineering" approach so typical of behavior therapy. Existential humanists view the individual as being reflective and goal-oriented with the capacity for a significant degree of freedom to make choices. They emphasize the importance of the human condition as experienced by the person. They are concerned with current econotechno-demo-environmental problems, but are not content with merely faulting external forces or "the system." Existential-humanists believe the existence of human freedom challenges each individual with the personal responsibility for his/her being for deciding one's own character, for committing oneself to a chosen value system, and for seeking an effective route to self-actualization. Given this state of affairs, it is not surprising that a number of Eastern religions have recently attracted large numbers of Western followers. In particular, various yoga movements, whose approaches to the contemporary human predicament correspond to those of modern humanistic-existential psychotherapies (cf. Walsh and Vaughan 1980), have become especially popular with reflective, college-educated individuals. This article deals specifically with certain aspects of Siddha Yoga, a movement headed until the summer of 1982 by Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, an Indian guru, whose main ashram (residential-meditation center) is located in Ganeshpuri, a village in India near Bombay. The specific feature of Siddha Yoga to be dicussed is called shaki-pat. From the report of those who have experienced it, it can be described as a holistic, person-altering interaction between guru and other. This interaction, which we term a psycho-spiritual communication, transcends the cultural differences of its participants. 2 It is a phenomenon whose analysis, on the one hand, challenges, even defies, the rules of western empirical social science, and on the other hand bridges the gap created by two of anthropology's operating assumptions: cultural relativism and the psychic unity of humankind. Below, we describe shaktipat through first person accounts within the context of Siddha Yoga. We conclude by raising some research questions whose investigation we believe will enhance the understanding of Siddha Yoga and anthropology. Because our study is at a preliminary stage, we offer no answers, only possible directions, with the hope of stimulating others interested in similar phenomena and in turn of being stimulated by their own ideas and reactions. History Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa became the successor of the Siddha lineage of meditation masters after his own guru, Swami Nityananda, passed away in Baba, as Muktananda is affectionately called by his followers, is a Siddha guru or "perfected master" (Shankar 1976). Muktananda became known all over India, as people from all walks of life sought him out for spiritual reasons. In 1970, after years of careful preparation, he visited Europe and the United States for the first time. He visited America again in 1974 and attracted a significant number of devotees, who became the foundation of his movement here. By 1976 at least eight Siddha meditation ashrams had been established in cities like Oakland, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago and Gainesville, Florida. In addition, Muktananda instructed many of his followers to utilize their homes as centers for evening meditation programs. Muktananda returned to Ganeshpuri, India in the fall of Over the next two years, the Ganeshpuri ashram became a place of pilgrimage as many Indians and Westerners went there to be close to the guru and to attend advanced meditation courses. Following the initiation of the first group of Siddha teaching swamis, Muktananda's ideas became even more widespread. During his third world tour, he attracted huge crowds in Japan, Australia and the United States. When traveling abroad and communicating with non-indians, Muktananda had to rely on interpreters because his spoken languages were those native to India. Despite this fact, his message was apparently understood widely. VOL. 8, NO. 4 DECEMBER

2 By the time of his death in October 1982, Muktananda's mission of creating a world meditation revolution through Siddha Yoga was underway. His work is being continued by his chosen successors, Swamis Chidvilasananda and Nityananda, who serve jointly as spiritual heads of the Ganeshpuri ashram as well as Siddha Yoga Dham Associates, the international foundation, which today coordinates the activities of more than 300 Siddha meditation centers and 30 residential ashrams around the world (Friedland 1982). The way of Siddha Yoga Muktananda's teachings have been influenced by Sufism, techniques of Patanjali's yoga sutras, the philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism and the ancient Vedanta scriptures. Siddha Yoga shares with them the essential idea that the key to all knowledge is to look within and "know thyself." Similarly, Siddha Yoga maintains that recognition of the inner self can only be attained through meditation. Central to Muktananda's teaching is the idea that the Self of one is the Self of all. Thus, when a person thoroughly knows his/her own Self, knowledge of the cosmos is also complete. The explicit assumption is that the Self is the source of all knowledge, virtue, beauty and joy. Furthermore, says Muktananda, the entire universe consists of the same consciousness and energy which comprise the Self. To know the Self is to know Shiva (universal consciousness)-the Self of all (Muktananda 1975). In addition to meditation, the other two essential practices of Siddha yoga are repetition of the mantra and "right understanding." The mantra of Siddha Yoga Om Namah Shivaya means in Sanskrit "I honor my inner Self." "Right understanding" involves the replacement of limited and self-defeating thoughts with more positive self perceptions. The Siddha student is told, "The world is as you see it," meaning that one's view of a situation determines its impact and meaning (a view also expressed in humanistic psychotherapy). Performed in concert they are supposed to provide balance and spiritual acceleration to both the worldly and spiritual growth of the Siddha student (Shiarella 1982). The guru is regarded as being fully realized with the power to attract and channel God's grace. His roles are many: he is the teacher par excellence and the primary life model. But most importantly, he has the power to awaken the shakti or creative meditation energy in each person. This process of awakening, called shaktipat, constitutes the initiation of the Siddha student on the path to self realization. It also constitutes the most valued single experience in the guru-student relationship. Siddha Yoga, while centering on the guru, grace and shakti, is regarded as a maha-yoga a comprehensive framework which utilizes the various techniques found in most branches or types of yoga. These include the postures and breathing exercises of hatha yoga; the yogic "map" of the human subtle energy body which includes kundalini, chakras, and nadis; the universal theory of the cosmos which derives from Advaita Vedanta and especially Kashmir Shaivism; the devotional orientation and its adjuncts which may be found in the Narada Bhakti Sutra and in the Maharashtrian saints (and other "Siddhas"); the active emphasis on discipline, work, destiny, and service which characterizes karma yoga; and a hierarchy of spiritual attainments and tenets for daily life such as is commonly associated with raja yoga (Thursby and Dunn 1983). Muktananda's devotees maintain that what is especially unique about Muktananda's "way" is his ability to present in a universally acceptable manner "the secret initiations and experiences of the Sakti Pat, the yoga of the goddess, of the primordial energy of Siva " (White 1974:317). The gurus of most other yoga movements require long periods of arduous exercises, prayer and purification as preparation for shaktipat. By contrast, Muktananda dispensed shaktipat to whomever desired it. He even designed a brief two-day intensive program for this purpose. During these intensives he commonly gave shaktipat through his touch (pinching an individual between the eyes, stroking the individual's cheek or patting the back of the neck) or by swatting persons with fragranced peacock feathers. For some people the reception of shakipat is immediately manifested by physical swaying, heavy breathing, spontaneously assuming hatha yoga postures, or by emotional crying or laughing. For others, the reaction is more subtle. Siddha Yoga practitioners believe receiving shaktipat: 1) enhances one's ability to meditate, 2) gives one's life view a more positive, "innerdirected" focus, 3) causes negative habits (e.g. excessive smoking and drinking, drug addiction) to "fall away," and 5) causes one to feel more energetic and creative. Followers also contend that the reception of shaktipat ultimately results in the achievement of self realization. For the anthropologist, shaktipat represents a striking example of cross-cultural, psychospiritual communication. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the following testimonies of the shaktipat experiences recorded by persons from markedly different cultural backgrounds. Case I Victor Campana (1979) describes himself "as a hot-blooded Latin-American," "a mixture of 14 ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMANISM QUARTERLY

3 Arabian and Spanish blood," born in Ecuador, but more recently living in Los Angeles. He writes that he was initially skeptical of the guru his daughter had discovered, and went to meet Muktananda at her insistence out of curiosity. He relates his 1974 Skatipat episode as follows: When Baba pinched my forehead between my eyebrows it was like receiving an electric shock. This energy travelled all the way down to the base of my spine and then a wave of heat began to spread throughout my whole body. When it reached my face my muscles started twitching uncontrollably, and when it reached my forehead, a wave of heat like red balls of fire was coming out from the point where Baba had pinched me. I was actually shooting fire from my forehead. Then I fell into meditation. I found myself in the centre of a white, limitless, luminous space. I saw Baba floating in the air, and stretching his finger, point at me, he looked like Jesus Christ. On Sunday evening when I was driving home after the Intensive, right in the middle of the freeway, I realized that I had actually found God. I had been carrying him within me and I didn't know it. He was the whole world. He was Jesus and He was Krishna and He was Baba, and He was me too. I also realized that there was no way back for me from the path I had started walking since I met my Guru. (pp ) Case III Case II The following is an account of a female undergraduate at the University of Florida. My personal experience with Siddha Yoga began six years ago when I first started dabbling in spiritual things. I heard there was going to be a Swami in town who was going to give Shaktpat. My friend and teacher spoke highly of Muktananda and of the power of such a great being. I was curious and excited about the two day workshop that was going to be held at the student union. I remember sitting through various talks and chants awaiting the meditation session and the special touch. As the Swami began walking around and giving the touch, I experienced great fear and resistance and I closed myself off, wondering what I was doing in such a weird place. Nevertheless, he came by, pulled my head back and sqeezed the bridge of my nose. Instantly and effortlessly I became completely relaxed and noticed a magnificent purple light in the form of a diamond in my mind's eye. I gazed and gazed at its shimmering light and sank into a deep restful meditation. That evening at work, I began noticing warm rushes of energy rising up my spine and out the top of my head. This was the Shakti the inner energy which had awakened! It was an amazing and pleasant new sensation that I would learn to accept as an integral part of my being. This energy was to teach me many lessons over the next six years. My whole perception quickly changed. For the first time in my life, I felt happy happy for no reason. I began finding great joy in looking at trees, the sky and nature in general, having never had any appreciation for it in the past. I also found myself singing which was something I had never spontaneously done before. Within one month, I lost my taste for meat, liquor, drugs and cigarettes. It was an absolutely effortless happening not a self-willed renunciation. I began looking forward to my yoga and meditation times. I became only interested in reading spiritual books and attending spiritual get togethers. For the first time in my life, I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw, not because my outer appearance had changed but because I was identifying with a part of myself that was perfect and whole, (personal communication). Dr. Anne du Pontavice, a physician of oncology in Paris, met Muktananda in 1976 shortly after she had read his spiritual autobiography, The Play of Consciousness. She attended a weekend intensive at the urging of her brother. She writes that her initial resistance to Muktananda soon gave away: By the afternoon when Baba came back (into the Intensive), I had given up fighting. While he was going around to give the touch, his feet reached out for mine, and I felt blazing heat going up my whole body. When he sat back in his chair, I saw him turn into a huge blue circle with golden letters saying, 'I am God.' I was astounded by this vision. I opened my eyes and closed them, but the vision was still there. So I bowed VOL. 8, NO. 4 DECEMBER

4 Case IV deeply in my heart and I said, 'You will be my Guru.' When Baba left France, I didn't feel upset at all, because I knew he was living in me in the form of his Shakti (du Pontavice 1981:8). John Larkin, an Australian journalist, first met Muktananda in a house in Melbourne in 1970 for the purpose of doing a story on him. Four years later, Muktananda held a meeting in the same house, and Larkin again attended for journalistic reasons. He writes: But this time, something happened the first night I was there. As they were doing the Om Namah Shivaya chant, I started to cry, because I felt such a relief at having come home. I allowed myself to have that experience for myself, and it was wonderful. A few days later, Larkin returned to meditate and Muktananda went to him. He [Muktananda] didn't say anything but he bent over me and took my face in his hands. I thought perhaps he was going to kiss me. I thought, well, I'll go along with whatever is needed here. But it wasn't that. It was a much greater gift than a kiss: he breathed into my nostrils. The process was very mysterious a little bit frightening, but very friendly; it felt right. I felt very humble. He stroked my head and he walked off without saying anything. A few days later, John and several other people were sitting in the garden looking at Muktananda: Suddenly the sky overhead changed; the whole texture of it became like a symmetrical mesh, and I became Baba. I don't mean that I identified with him physically, but that I experienced the life that was behind his eyes and the life in me that was observing him as the same. There was no distinction between the two at all. (1981:5-6) Case V This last case involves Dr. L. Smith, a Florida physician known to both of this article's authors. Dr. Smith's account is repeated here from the book by humanist J.C. Pearce (1981: 30-31), along with Pearce's commentary. Leonard Smith, a young heart surgeon from Gainesville, Florida, was disturbed over a tendency toward emotional hardness in his profession, brought on by the continual exposure to death. He took up meditation as a possible means to maintain some openness and empathy with his patients. Eventually he was led to meet Baba Muktananda. During an Intensive (an initiation into Siddha meditation) in August of 1979, Smith reports: "Baba grabbed me by the bridge of the nose and held on. I seemed to sense him saying 'Stop thinking and just experience this.' I saw blue electricity going from Baba's arms up to his head, and then saw my own Self as a body of blue energy." Leonard's rational, academic mind resisted strenuously at this point, with the usual arguments about illusion, hypnotism, and such. Then he saw his right arm, transparent blue, with every tissue, nerve, and blood vessel visible, "... clinging to the branch of a tree, holding on." (This was a graphic demonstration of one's academic ego holding on to its position of dominance.) "I felt each finger being pried loose, one at a time, until suddenly I snapped, like a rubber band, into Baba's head. There I found myself in an immense vacuum an infinite space. A wave of emotion swept up from my belly and I wept for fifteen minutes or more." This was, Smith said,"... an archetypal weeping" he wept for all the suffering and death in the world. He was "... cleaned out, left calm and peaceful" afterward. His life changed markedly from that moment. He became centered, calm, full of love and empathy for his patients, continually more skilled at his profession, a source of strength for those around him. (And he returns at every opportunity to continue his ongoing relationship with Baba.) Pearce regards Smith's exprience as a "classical case of Shaktipat." Discussion Because shaktipat is such an internal, subjective, psycho-physical experience, it is difficult to deal with in terms of strict empirical social science. Critics immediately ask whether the experience is genuine or authentic. Whether the sources of the experiential information (i.e., the participants) are objective or biased in their accounts. Such questions are, of course, themselves biased in directions which tend to invalidate both the shaktipat phenomenon and its primary participants. Here we meet the same 16 ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMANISM QUARTERLY

5 kind of problem that Grindal (1983) confronted when he endeavored to appreciate deeply and personally an African form of death divination. His unique approach is well worth examining. In accordance with Grindal's position we agree that an understanding of such phenomena as death divination (or shaktipat) may require a departure from the strict canons of western empirical social science and may necessitate the assumption that reality is relative to one's consciousness of it (lbid.:76). The first person accounts recorded above and numerous other testimonies from people in different countries describe Shaktipat as a kind of Maslowian "peak experience," in that it occupies a moment in which the individual "perceives the unity of the cosmos, fuses with it, and rests in it, completely satisfied for the moment in his yearning for one-ness" (Maslow 1970:95). The experiences expressed by those who have received shaktipat correspond closely to the aspects of peak experiences enumerated by Maslow: The universe is perceived as an integrated whole; there is tremendous concentration of a kind deemed extraordinary; the experience is regarded as self-validating and self-justifying; the experience has a timeless and spaceless quality about it; it is regarded as beautiful and good, never as ugly and bad; during shaktipat the dichotomies, polarites, and conflicts of life may be transcended or resolved; there is an absence of fear and anxiety; and shaktipat has profound positive after-effects on the person. Shaktipat, like a "peak experience," usually involves "a sense of the sacred glimpsed in and through the particular instance of the momentary, the secular, the worldly" (Maslow 1970:68). As anthropologists, we find the phenomenon discussed interesting, both as an example of the human quest in the modern age and as a crosscultural, creative experience which has a bearing on anthropology's underlying assumptions. During the greater part of the twentieth century, modern anthropology has been operating with two generally accepted, but partially conflicting assumptions: cultural relativism and the psychic unity of humankind. Cultural relativism was born as a reaction to ethnocentrism. It is founded on the belief that every culture is unique and that a culture's components lose their meaning when taken out of context. This dogma rejects all attempts to evaluate cultures by employing exogenous standards. Similarly, it deplores schemes which rank cultures according to a single set of criteria. But cultures are ultimately human creations; if one accepts the psychic unity assumption, the "incomparability of cultures" argument must be challenged to some degree (Bidney 1968). The psychic unity position is often traced to Adolph Bastian (b d. 1905), a German who posited that humans generally share elementary ideas Elementargedanken which lead to similar responses to life's challenges, modified somewhat by environment and history. The Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung (b d. 1961) maintained that humans everywhere share unconscious symbolizations or a collective unconscious which derives from the remnants of ancestral struggles with the challenges of human existence. The resulting archetypes are expressed in the deepest of human experiences and are revealed in areas such as religion and great literature. Anthropologists have generally rejected Jung's ideas of the collective unconscious, but some have strongly supported the principle of universal human thought. Franz Boas (b d. 1942) in one of his seminal works argued that "there is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man" (1939:v). In his controversial, but stimulating work Claude Levi-Strauss insists that humans in all times and places employ the same basic modes of thought to address life's universal paradoxes within the blended context of nature, society and culture. As anthropologists we can learn a great deal more about humans, our age and our discipline by focusing attention on spiritual movements which appeal to peoples of diverse cultural backgrounds and promote appreciation of self and others through the development of heightened awareness and intuitive modes of psychospiritual communication. As humanistic anthropologists we may ask: Why do movements, such as Siddha Yoga, which originate in a particular cultural milieu, have cross-cultural appeal? Why is it that certain, apparently unique types of psycho-spiritual communications (such as shaktipat) can be shared spontaneously by peoples of diverse cultural backgrounds? What elements comprising such spiritual movements facilitate their spread, and what sociocultural, political, and economic contextual characteristics enhance the crosscultural sharing of their messages and experience. What are the dynamic, humanistic, developmental characteristics of the peoples seeking out such movements and gurus? With these kinds of questions in mind, the authors have embarked on an extensive study of Siddha Yoga. We offer the above as a preliminary statement to readers sharing our interests. Notes 'In his latest book, Bruno Bettelheim (1983) argues that Freud's thought has been mistranslated and misinterpreted in the English-speaking world. Bettelheim maintains that Freud was primarily concerned with the human soul and his agenda was essentially humanistic. VOL. 8, NO. 4 DECEMBER

6 2 One of this article's authors, Kanu Sandra Dunn, is a graduate student in anthropology and a devotee of Swami Muktananda. She has experienced shaktipat, and consequently shares the consensual reality of those deeply involved in Siddha Yoga. Magnarella, the other author, is a professor of anthropology and has not experienced shaktipat. He has participated in the activities of the Gainesville Siddha Yoga Ashram, but not as a devotee. In writing this article, both authors have attempted to avoid an advocacy position and have endeavored to present the subject in a form acceptable to a western humanistic-social science journal without doing an injustice to the subject and Dunn's perceptions of it. For references to the literature dealing with the altered state of consciousness of fieldworkers who have entered into the consensual reality of the people they study, see Grindal (1983:78). Grindal, Bruce T Into the Heart of Sisala Experience: Witnessing Death Divination. Journal of Anthropological Research. Vol. 39, No. 1: Larkin, John 1981 A Sense of Wholeness. Siddha Yoga. Vol. 10, No. 8:5-7. Maslow, Abraham H Religions, Values and Peak Experiences. New York: Viking. Muktananda, Swami 1975 Siddha Meditation. Emeryville, California: Dharma Press. Pearce, Joseph Chilton 1981 The Bond of Power. New York: E.P. Dutton. REFERENCES CITED Bettelheim, Bruno 1983 Freud and Man's Soul. New York: Knopf. Bidney, David 1968 Cultural Relativism. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: MacMillan. Vol. 3: Boas, Franz 1939 The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: MacMillan. Campana, Victor 1979 A Love Story. Shree Gurudev-Vani. Vol., No. 16: du Pontavice, Anne 1981 The Self Never Dies. Siddha Yoga. Vol. 10, No. 3:7-10. Friedland, Ron 1982 SYDA: Building A Foundation. Meditate. Vol. 2, No. 4:18. Shankar 1976 Muktananda: Siddha Guru. Oakland: SYDA Foundation. Shiarella, Robert 1982 Journey to Joy. New York: Matrika Publications. Thursby, Gene and Kanu Dunn 1983 Swami Muktananda and the Siddha Yoga Movement. Paper presented at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religions. Atlanta. Walsh, R.N. and F. Vaughan 1980 Beyond the Ego: Toward Transpersonal Models of the Person and Psychotherapy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Vol. 20:5-31. White, Charles S.J Swami Muktananda and the Enlightenment Through Shakti-pat. History of Religions. Vol. 13, No. 4: ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMANISM QUARTERLY