Siddha Yoga
According to its literature, the Siddha Yoga tradition is "based mainly on eastern philosophies" and "draws many of its teachings from the Indian yogic texts of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism, the Bhagavad Gita and the poet-saints.
In 1975 Muktananda founded the SYDA Foundation (Siddha Yoga Dham Associates) to administer the work of his global "meditation revolution".
[18] The SYDA Foundation offers a variety of courses and retreats throughout the year, including the meditation intensives first developed by Muktananda in the 1970s.
[21] A central element of the Siddha Yoga path is shaktipat-diksha, literally translated as “initiation by descent of divine power,” through which a seeker’s Kundalini Shakti is awakened God-realization by the Guru.
In his autobiography, Play of Consciousness, Muktananda describes how he received shaktipat initiation from Nityananda on August 15, 1947, and how he attained moksha or God-realization after nine more years of sadhana and discipleship.
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.
[29] In 1974, Muktananda founded the SYDA Foundation, an organization designated to protect, preserve and facilitate the dissemination of the Siddha Yoga teachings.
[30][31] In 1979, Muktananda created The Prison Project, designed to making the teachings, practices and experience of the Siddha Yoga path available to incarcerated seekers.
[37][36] One of 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.
[42] The mission of Muktabodha, based on Gurumayi’s original intention for the organization in 1997, is "to preserve endangered texts from the religious and philosophical traditions of classical India and make them accessible for study and scholarship worldwide.
"[43] In 2004, SYDA changed its focus from large events at its South Fallsburg ashram to bringing programs to where its followers lived.
Before 2008, the Ganeshpuri ashram had allowed Western backpackers to drop in for short stays and welcomed Indian visitors on weekends.
[48][49] In 1981, Stan Trout, a swami for Siddha Yoga, wrote an open letter in which he referred a number of stories of Muktananda engaging in sexual activities with young women, and using Sidda Yoga members to harass and make death threats to force people to "stop talking about your escapades with young girls in your bedroom.
[50] In 1983 William Rodarmor printed several allegations in CoEvolution Quarterly from anonymous female devotees that Muktananda regularly raped them.
[55] In November 2023 a lawsuit was filed in New York against the Siddha Yoga organization Syda Foundation on behalf of 3 plaintiffs.
Pechilis comments that while purity may have been an implicit credential for her predecessor gurus, one point of view would be that it became "explicit and greatly emphasized during the succession dispute and is now a primary lens"[33] for understanding Gurumayi's spiritual path; unusually for female gurus, Pechilis writes, she was not apparently expected to marry at any time, and instead she took sannyasa in the way a male guru would.
Some of the participants had moved to one or another of the two groups which split off from Siddha Yoga, Swami Nityananda's Shanti Mandir and Shankarananda's Shiva Yoga; they were moved to leave by the death of Muktananda, the changing leadership and the allegations that Muktananda had had sexual interactions with devotees, as well as changes in their own lives.
[63] The scholar of religion Catherine Wessinger comments that while devotees are varied, many are "upwardly mobile", and that the path seems to attract people from Jewish and Roman Catholic backgrounds.
She writes that Catholics will find many familiar features, such as venerated images of saints; the use of the rosary or mala to count repetitions of mantras; celibate "ministers" in distinctive robes; "uplifting congregational singing; elaborate and beautiful worship and places of worship; and finally, a strong authority figure ... who[m] devotees believe is able to perform miracles in response to needs".
