Siddha Yoga is a spiritual path (or new religious movement) based on the Hindu spiritual traditions of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism. The Siddha Yoga path was founded by Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa (1908–1982). The present spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga path is Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. The two main ashrams are: Gurudev Siddha Peeth in Ganeshpuri, India, and Shree Muktananda Ashram in upstate New York. The Siddha Yoga organization has ashrams and meditation centers in a number of countries, including India, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Brasil and Japan.

Essential Teachings

The Siddha Yoga Vision:

"For everyone, everywhere, to realize the presence of divinity in themselves and creation, the cessation of all miseries and suffering, and the attainment of supreme bliss."

The Siddha Yoga Mission:

"To constantly impart the knowledge of the Self." (Shiva Sutras III.28)

Three aphorisms express three essential teachings of Siddha Yoga:

"Honor your Self. Worship your Self. Meditate on your Self. God dwells within you as you." --Swami Muktananda

"See God in each other." --Swami Muktananda

"The heart is the hub of all sacred places. Go there and roam." --Bhagawan Nityananda

History

Swami Muktananda's spiritual teacher, Bhagawan Nityananda, has been widely regarded throughout India as a Siddha Guru or Avadhut since the mid-twentieth century. Born in South India, he first came to Ganeshpuri, a small village located 82 kilometers north of Mumbai, in 1936, settling there in a small hut built for him by the caretakers of the local Shiva temple. As his visitors and devotees increased in number, the hut expanded into an ashram.

In his autobiography, ''The Play of Consciousness,'' Muktananda describes how he received shaktipat initiation from Nityananda on August 15, 1947, and how he attained God-realization or moksha after nine more years of sadhana and discipleship.

Nityananda installed Muktananda in a small three-room dwelling in Gavdevi, a mile from Ganeshpuri. After his passing in 1961, Nityananda's Ganeshpuri ashram was converted into a samadhi shrine and has subsequently become a renowned temple and pilgrimage site. Under Swami Muktananda's leadership the three-room dwelling in Gavdevi also expanded into a flourishing ashram and international retreat site (Sri Gurudev Ashram, now Gurudev Siddha Peeth).

Swami Muktananda extended the ancient tradition of shaktipat initiation by bestowing spiritual initiation on tens of thousands of people throughout India and other countries. In 1975 he founded the Oakland Ashram in the California Bay Area, and in 1976 he established Shree Nityananda Ashram (now Shree Muktananda Ashram) in the Catskills Mountains, a resort area north of New York City. His fame increased to the point that he was made the subject of a ''New York'' magazine article ("Hanging out with the Guru") and a ''Time'' magazine article ("Instant Energy"), both in 1976.

One of Swami 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. In May 1982, Swami Muktananda installed Ms. Shetty (now known as Gurumayi Chidvilasananda or Gurumayi) and her brother Subhash Shetty (now known as Mahamandaleshwar Nityananda) as co-Gurus and spiritual leaders of Siddha Yoga. Swami Muktananda died on October 2, 1982.

In 1983 William Rodarmor wrote an article for the ''CoEvolution Quarterly'' charging that Muktananda had engaged in behavior at odds with his own teachings and with wider societal norms. In 1985, Mahamandaleshwar Swami Nityananda stepped down amid controversy and soon started his own organization, Shanti Mandir. Swami Chidvilasananda continued in her appointed role and has been the sole spiritual leader of Siddha Yoga since then. Lis Harris repeated and extended Rodarmor's allegations in an article in ''The New Yorker'' (1994). In 1996 former devotees started a website entitled 'Leaving Siddha Yoga' to express their grievances against Siddha Yoga. An article by Sarah Caldwell in the academic journal ''Nova Religio'' (2001) argued that Muktananda was both an enlightened spiritual teacher and a covert practitioner of an esoteric form of Tantric sexual yoga.

Swami Chidvilasananda has expanded the philanthropic work initiated by Swami Muktananda. In 1992 she founded the PRASAD Project, an independent, not-for-profit, charitable organization dedicated to providing impoverished communities in India with medical care, dental care, eye care, nutrition, education and community development. In 1997 she established the Muktabodha Institute, an independent non-profit foundation with its own publishing imprint, Agama Press, to foster and encourage the preservation and study of the ancient philosophical texts of India.

Practices

The Siddha Yoga practices are intended to help the seeker "touch and expand the inner mystical state, until over time he or she becomes established in his experience of yoga or oneness with God."

Siddha Yoga meditation, or the practice of turning the attention inward, involves silently focusing the attention on a mantra and on the flow of breath. The principal Siddha Yoga meditation and japa mantra is the mantra Om Namah Shivaya.

Siddha Yoga chanting involves the use of music and sacred mantras "to enter into a dialogue with the divine." There are two main types of Siddha Yoga chants: ''Nama Sankirtana'' (lyrical chanting of Sanskrit mantras, typically the names of God), and ''Swadhyaya'' (the chanting of longer Sanskrit scriptural texts). Scriptural texts chanted in Siddha Yoga ashrams and meditation centers include the morning and evening ''Arati''; the ''Guru Gita'', a hymn of 182 verses transmitted in the ''Skanda Purana''; ''Shree Rudram'', an ancient hymn to Rudra (Shiva) preserved in the ''Krishna Yajurveda''; and the ''Kundalini Stavaha'', an eight-stanza hymn to the Kundalini.

Siddha Yoga students can participate in satsang, group meetings or programs held weekly at Siddha Yoga ashrams and meditation centers. Satsangs typically include talks, chanting, and meditation.

The SYDA Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting, preserving, and disseminating the Siddha Yoga teachings, offers a variety of courses and retreats throughout the year, including the meditation intensives first developed by Swami Muktananda in the 1970s. The Siddha Yoga Meditation Intensive is a one or two day retreat in which devotees are said to receive shaktipat (the awakening of the shakti, or spiritual energy, that resides within the devotee). Intensives are typically held once or twice a year and are significant in Siddha Yoga because the "bestowal of shaktipat" is a core element in Siddha Yoga philosophy. The SYDA Foundation also offers retreats where students can deepen their experience of the practices.

The work of the organization (which involves the maintenance of Siddha Yoga ashrams and meditation centers, as well as the design and production of meditation programs, courses, retreats, and publications) is carried out by the work of "sevites," Siddha Yoga students engaged in seva, or "selfless service," as a transformational practice. Students can practice seva either through volunteer work at an ashram or a meditation center in their city, or by doing their worldly work as an offering to god.

Other Siddha Yoga practices include japa (mantra repetition), contemplation, and dakshina, the traditional practice of making a voluntary monetary offering to a saint as an expression of gratitude for what has been received.

All of the Siddha Yoga teachings and practices are intended to be compatible with everyday worldly life and with the teachings and practices of all religions.

Holidays

Students of Siddha Yoga celebrate two major Hindu religious holidays: Maha Shivaratri (celebrated on the night of the new moon in late February) and Guru Purnima (celebrated on the full moon in July–August). They also celebrate the birthdays of Swami Muktananda and Swami Chidvilasananda; Swami Muktananda's divya diksha day (the day he received initiation); and the mahasamadhi anniversaries of Swami Muktananda and Bhagawan Nityananda.

Scriptures

The Siddha Yoga tradition draws its teachings from the yogic philosophy of Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, and the Maharashtran poet-saints. Principal texts from the Vedantic tradition include the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Viveka Chudamani of Shankaracharya, and the Yoga Vasistha. Texts from the Kashmir Shaivite tradition include the Shiva Sutras of Vasugupta, the Spanda Karikas of Vasugupta, the Prataybhijnahridayam, and the Vijnana Bhairava. Other texts referred to by Swamis Muktananda and Chidvilasananda include Jnaneshwari, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Bhakti Sutras of Narada, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and poet saints such as Kabir, Hafez, and Tukaram Maharaj.

The name

"Siddha Yoga" ("perfect" or "perfected" yoga) is a Sanskrit term adopted by Swami Muktananda (1908–1982) to describe the path of self-realization that he embarked on under the guidance of his spiritual teacher, the Indian saint Bhagawan Nityananda. Swami Muktananda regarded the path he learned from his teacher as a perfect path because it embraced all of the traditional yogas (jnana yoga, hatha yoga, raja yoga, and bhakti yoga), spontaneously bringing the disciple to perfection in each. In 1975 Swami Muktananda founded the SYDA Foundation (Siddha Yoga Dham Associates) to administer the work of his global "meditation revolution."

"Siddha Yoga" has been a registered service mark of the SYDA Foundation, a domestic non-profit corporation, since 1977. As an educational service mark, it is used in teaching and conducting workshops for individual spiritual development.

The ancient generic Sanskrit term "Siddha Yoga" (or "perfected" yoga) is attested in the Third Tantra of the Tirumantiram of Tirumular, a Tamil poet of the 7th or 8th century. A definition of "Siddha Yoga" is also offered by Swami Shankar Purushottam Tirtha, a yogi from the dual Tirtha/Siddhayoga lineage, who wrote two books on "Siddhayoga" in the early 1900s:

A further definition of "Siddha Yoga" was offered in 1948 by Swami Purushottam Tirtha's disciple, Swami Vishnu Tirth:

Swami Muktananda himself defined a true Guru, or spiritual teacher, as "one who awakens the inner shakti Kundalini through shaktipat."

See also

Satguru

Notes

References

Also cited as: Publisher=Siddha Yoga Publications; ISBN=0911307818 1st edition (in English) , Second edition. (in Tamil, translated to English by Dr. B. Natarajan) Second revised reprint edition. Two volumes. First published 1927 by the University of Calcutta. First English edition. First published the early 1900s in Bengali and Hindi. First English edition. First published the early 1900s in Bengali and Hindi.

Further reading

Professor Paul Zweig writes of his experience of receiving Shaktipat from Swami Muktananda in this anthology.

External links

Official site of the SYDA foundation

Leaving Siddha Yoga

Category:Hindu movements and organizations Category:Yoga organizations Category:Shaivism Category:New religious movements Category:Yoga Category:Yoga styles

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