The beat goes ॐ

Okay, I'll give it to you straight: for the most part, Western yoga understands almost nothing about the chakras that the original creators of the concept thought was important about them. If you read a book like Anodea Judith's famous Wheels of Life or other books inspired by it, you are not reading a work of yoga philosophy but of Western occultism, based on three main sources: 1) earlier works of Western occultism that borrow Sanskrit terms without really understanding them (like Theosophist C.W. Leadbeater's The Chakras, 1927); 2) John Woodroffe's flawed 1918 translation of a text on the chakras written in Sanskrit in 1577; and 3) 20th-century books by Indian yoga gurus which are themselves based on sources 1) and 2). Books on the chakras based on sound comprehension of the original Sanskrit sources exist only in the scholarly world.

'But does that matter?' yogis ask me. 'I've benefited so much from Anodea Judith's book and others like it, don't take that away from me!' I won't and I can't. Whatever benefit you've received, from whatever source, is real if you say it is.  I'm just here to tell you two things: first, that when modern Western authors on the chakras tell you they are presenting ancient teachings, they're lying—but they don't know that they are, because they can't assess the validity of their source materials (since they don't read Sanskrit). Second, for those who are interested, I'm here to let you know a little bit about what yogic concepts mean in their original context (because I'm a Sanskrit scholar, and a meditator who happens to prefer the traditional forms). Only you can assess whether that is of any benefit to you. I'm not claiming that older is intrinsically better. I'm not trying to imply there's no spiritual value to Western occultism. I'm just approximating the historical truth in simple English words as best I can. So I'll get on with it now: the six fundamental facts about the chakras that modern yogis don't know. (Again, please see the p.s. at the bottom for a definition of what a chakra is.)

1. There's not just one chakra system in the original tradition, there are many.

So many! The theory of the subtle body and its energy centers called cakras (or padmas, ādhāras, lakṣyas, etc.) comes from the tradition of Tantrik Yoga, which flourished from 600-1300 CE, and is still alive today. In mature Tantrik Yoga (after the year 900 or so), every one of the many branches of the tradition articulated a different chakra system, and some branches articulated more than one. Five-chakra systems, six-chakra systems, seven, nine, ten, fifteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight and more chakras are taught, depending on what text you're looking at. The seven- (or, technically, 6 + 1) chakra system that Western yogis know about is just one of many, and it became dominant around the 16th century (see point #4 below).

Now, I know what you're thinking—'But which system is right? How many chakras are there really?' And that brings us to our first major misunderstanding. The chakras aren't like organs in the physical body; they aren't fixed facts that we can study like doctors study neural ganglia. The energy body is an extraordinarily fluid reality, as we should expect of anything nonphysical and supersensuous. The energy body can present, experientially speaking, with any number of energy centers, depending on the person and the yogic practice they're performing.

Having said that, there are a few centers which are found in all systems—specifically, chakras in the lower belly, the heart, and the crown of the head, since these are three places in the body where humans all over the world experience both emotional and spiritual phenomena. But apart from those three, there's huge variety in the chakra systems we find in the original literature. One is not more 'right' than another, except relative to a specific practice. For example, if you're doing a five-element practice, you use a five-chakra system (see point #6 below). If you're internalizing the energy of six different deities, you use a six-chakra system. Duh, right? But this crucial bit of information has not yet reached Western yoga.

We've only just started down this rabbit hole, Alice. Wanna learn more?

2. The chakra systems are prescriptive, not descriptive.

This might be the most important point. English sources tend to present the chakra system as an existential fact, using descriptive language (like ‘the mūlādhāra chakra is at the base of the spine. it has four petals,’ and so on). But in most of the original Sanskrit sources, we are not being taught about the way things are, we are being given a specific yogic practice: we are to visualize a subtle object made of colored light, shaped like a lotus or a spinning wheel, at a specific point in the body, and then activate mantric syllables in it, for a specific purpose. When you understand this, point #1 above makes more sense. The texts are prescriptive — they tell what you ought to do to achieve a specific goal by mystical means. When the literal Sanskrit reads, in its elliptical fashion, ‘Four-petaled lotus at the base of the body’ we are supposed to understand ‘The yogī ought to visualize a four-petaled lotus…’ See point #5 for more on this.

3. The psychological states associated with the chakras are completely modern and Western.

On countless websites and in countless books, we read that the mūlādhāra chakra is associated with survival & safety, that maṇipūra chakra is associated with willpower & self-esteem, and so on. The educated yogi should know that all associations of the chakras with psychological states is a modern Western innovation that started with Jung. Perhaps such associations represent experiential realities for some people (though usually not without priming). We certainly don’t find them in the Sanskrit sources. There’s only one exception I’m aware of, and that is the 10-chakra system for yogi-musicians that I’ve done a blog post on. But in that 13th-century system, we do not find each chakra associated with a specific emotion or psychological state; rather, each petal of each lotus-chakra is associated with a distinct emotion or state, and there seems to be no pattern by which we could create a label for the chakra as a whole.

But that’s not all. Nearly all the many associations found in Anodea Judith’s Wheels of Life have no basis in the Indian sources. Each chakra, Judith tells us, is associated with a certain bodily gland, certain bodily malfunctions, certain foods, a certain metal, a mineral, an herb, a planet, a path of yoga, a suit of the tarot, a sephira of Jewish mysticism (!), and an archangel of Christianity (!!). None of these associations are found in the original sources. Judith or her teachers created them based on perceived similarities. That goes also for the essential oils and crystals that other books and websites claim correspond to each chakra. (I should note that Judith does feature information from an original Sanskrit source [that is, the Ṣhat-cakra-nirūpaṇa, see below] under the label ‘Lotus Symbols’ for each chakra. I should also note that Anodea is a really lovely person whose work has benefited many. This isn't personal.)

This is not to say that putting a certain kind of crystal on your belly when you’re having self-esteem issues and imagining it purifying your maṇipūra chakra might not help you feel better. Maybe it will, depending on the person. While this practice is certainly not traditional, and has not been tested over generations (which is the whole point of tradition, really), god knows there’s more on heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my rational brain.

But, in my view, people should know when the pedigree of a practice is a few decades, not centuries. If a practice has value, then you don't need to falsify its provenance, right?

Hey there—do you like this post? Do you want learn more? Then please sign up for my email list! You won't receive many mailings, and we'll never share your email.

4. The seven-chakra system popular today derives not from a scripture, but from a treatise written in 1577.

The chakra system Western yogis follow is that found in a Sanskrit text written by a guy named Pūrṇānanda Yati. He completed his text (the Ṣhaṭ-chakra-nirūpaṇa or 'Explanation of the six chakras', actually chapter six of a larger work) in the year 1577.

In an earlier version of this post, I called the 7-chakra system 'late and somewhat atypical'. But after a few days, I realized that I was mistaken—a simpler version of the same 7-chakra system is found in a 13th-century postscriptural text called the Śāradā-tilaka ('Sarasvatī's Ornament'), though that text does plainly acknowledge that there are multiple chakra systems (such as systems of 12 or 16 chakras). However, most yogis (both Indian and Western) know the 7-chakra system only through Pūrṇānanda’s 16th-century work, or rather, through a relatively incoherent and confusing translation of it, done by John Woodroffe in 1918. Still, the text is important to many lineages in India today. Would it have been without the Woodroffe translation? I doubt it, since there are very few people in modern India who read Sanskrit fluently.

More important, however, is the fact that the tradition itself regards scriptural texts as infallible and human authors as fallible, so it’s ironic that modern yogis functionally treat Pūrṇānanda’s 7-chakra system as divinely revealed. Personally, I’m not sure that anything written in words can be considered infallible, but if you want to revere a yogic teaching as divinely revealed, it makes more sense to do it with a text that actually claims to be such — like the original Tantrik scriptures (composed prior to 1300). Of course, Pūrṇānanda does base his work on earlier, scriptural sources — but that doesn’t mean that he perfectly understood them (see point #6 below). In summary, then, the seven-chakra system that you know is based on a flawed translation of a nonscriptural source. This by no means invalidates it, just problematizes its hegemony.

Note that Tantric Buddhism (e.g., of Tibet) often preserves older forms, and indeed the five-chakra system is dominant in that tradition (as well as the fundamental three-bindu system). For a typical five-chakra system as found in classical Tantra, see page 387 of my book, Tantra Illuminated.

5. The purpose of a chakra system is to function as a template for nyāsa.

As far as the original authors were concerned, the main purpose of any chakra system was to function as a template for nyāsa, which means the installation of mantras and deity-energies at specific points of the subtle body. So, though millions of people are fascinated with the chakras today, almost none of them are using them for their intended purpose. That’s okay. Again, I’m not here to make anyone wrong, just to educate the folks who are interested.

The most outstanding features of the chakra systems in the original sources are these two: 1) that the mystical sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet are distributed across the ‘petals’ of all the chakras in the system, and 2) that each chakra is associated with a specific Hindu deity. This is because the chakra system is, as I said, primarily a template for nyāsa. In nyāsa, you visualize a specific mantric syllable in a specific location in a specific chakra in your energy body while silently intoning its sound. Clearly, this practice is embedded in a culturally-specific context in which the sounds of the Sanskrit language are seen as uniquely powerful vibrations that can form an effective part of a mystical practice that brings about spiritual liberation or worldly benefits through magical means. Invoking the image and energy of a specific deity into a specific chakra is also culturally-specific, though if Western yogis come to understand what those deities stand for, the practice could potentially be meaningful for them as well, though probably never as meaningful as for someone who grew up with those deities as paradigmatic icons emblazoned on their subconscious minds.

The so-called Cause-deities (karana-devatās) figure largely in every chakra system. These deities form a fixed sequence. From the lowest chakra to the highest, they are Indra, Brahmā, Vishnu, Rudra, Īśvara, Sadāśiva, and Bhairava, with the first and last of these often not appearing, depending on the number of chakras. The last deity in the list of Cause-deities is never the ultimate deity of the given system, for that deity (whoever it is) is enthroned in the sahasrāra on or above the crown of the head (which technically is not a chakra, since chakras by definition are pierced by Kuṇḍalinī in her ascent, whereas the sahasrāra is her destination). Therefore, Bhairava (the most esoteric form of Shiva) is only included in the list of Cause-deities when he is transcended by the Goddess.

6. The seed-mantras that you think go with the chakras actually go with the elements that happen to be installed in those chakras.

This is simpler than it sounds. You’ve been told that the seed-mantra (bīja or single-syllable mantra) of the mūlādhāra chakra is LAM. It’s not. Not in any Sanskrit source, not even Pūrṇānanda’s somewhat garbled syncretic account. And the mantra of svādhiṣṭhāna chakra is not VAM. Wait, what? It’s simple: LAM (rhymes with 'thumb') is the seed-mantra of the Earth element, which in most chakra visualization practices is installed in the mūlādhāra. VAM is the seed-mantra of the water element, which is installed in svādhiṣṭhāna (at least, in the seven-chakra system you know about). And so on: RAM is the syllable for Fire, YAM for Wind, and HAM for Space. (All these bījas rhyme with 'thumb'; though I should note in passing that in esoteric Tantrik Yoga, the elemental bījas actually have different vowel sounds which are thought to be much more powerful.)

So the main point is that the fundamental mantras associated with the first five chakras on every website you can Google actually do not belong to those chakras, but rather to the five elements installed in them. This is important to know if you ever want to install one of those elements in a different place. ‘Gasp! I can do that?’ Totally. What do you think might be the effect on your relationships of always installing the Wind element in the heart center? (Remember, YAM is the mantra of Air/Wind, not of the anāhata chakra.) D’you ever notice that modern American yogis have really unstable relationships?  Could that be connected to repeatedly invoking Wind on the level of the heart? Nahhh….. (I can be funny now because only a small percentage of my readers have made it down this far.)  So maybe you want to install some Earth in the heart sometime, cuz grounding is good for your heart. In that case, it’s kinda handy to know that LAM is the Earth element mantra, not the mūlādhāra-chakra mantra. (Note that, traditionally, though the elements can be installed in different places in the body, they can't change their set sequence. That is, they can telescope up or down depending on the given practice, but Earth is always lowest, then Water, etc.)

Furthermore, some of the geometric figures associated with the chakras today also properly belong to the Elements. Earth is traditionally represented by a (yellow) square, Water by a (silvery) crescent, Fire by a downward-pointing (red) triangle, Wind by a hexagram or six-pointed star, and Space by a circle. So when you see those figures inscribed in illustrations of the chakras, know that they actually are representations of those Elements, not of a geometry inherent in the chakra itself.

This brings me to my last point: even a Sanskrit source can be confused. For example, in Pūrṇānanda's 16th-century text that is the basis of the popular modern chakra system, the five Elements are installed in the first five chakras of a seven-chakra system. But this doesn't really work, because in all the classical systems, Space element is installed at the crown of the head, since that is where the yogī experiences an expansive opening into infinite spaciousness. Space is the element that merges into the infinite, so it has to be at the crown. I would speculate that Pūrṇānanda placed Space at the throat chakra because he lived at a time of increasing dogmatic adherence to the received tradition without critical reflection (a trend which sadly has continued), and the tradition he received was a Kaula one in which the classical Cause-deities got shoved down to make room for later, higher deities (specifically Bhairava and the Goddess), and the elements were uncritically kept fused to the deities and chakras with which they were previously associated. (Having said that, the fact that Pūrṇānanda was drawing on Kaula sources is not obvious, because instead of enthroning the Goddess at the sahasrāra as we would expect in a Kaula 7-chakra system, we find Paramaśiva, probably due to the influence of Vedānta. See the questions and answers below for more on this.)  

So, we’ve barely scratched the surface of this subject. No, I’m not kidding. It’s really complex, as you can gather by taking a look at the scholarly literature, like Dory Heilijgers-Seelen’s work, or Gudrun Bühnemann's. It takes uncommon patience and focus to even read such work, let alone produce it. So here’s what I hope will be the result of this post: some humility. A few less claims to authority when it comes to really esoteric subjects. Maybe a few less yoga teachers trying to tell their students what the chakras are all about. Heck, I’m humbled by the complexity of the original sources, and that’s with twelve years of Sanskrit under my belt.

This is still mostly uncharted territory. So when it comes to the chakras, don’t claim you know. Tell your yoga students that every book on the chakras presents only one possible model. Nothing written in English is really authoritative for practitioners of yoga. So why not hold more gently the beliefs you've acquired about yoga, even while you keep learning? Let's admit we really don't understand these ancient yoga practices yet; and instead of seeking to be an authority on some oversimplified version of them, you can invite yourself and your students to look more clearly, more honestly, more carefully, and more non-judgmentally at their own inner experience.

After all, everything that every yoga master ever experienced is in you, too.

Like this post but you want something more practical for your spiritual life? Check out this post on the Power of Subtle Impressions (samskāras). Some people have called it 'revelatory'. And please sign up for my newsletter!

Postscript: This post is getting a wider circulation than I'm used to, and some people who don't know me interpret my wry tone as arrogance or sarcasm. In fact, I'm a real softie at heart. Please read my bio so that you can assess my qualifications to make the statements that I do. And if you're in the Bay Area or Colorado, come out to one of my live teaching events!

Late capitalism is like your love life: it looks a lot less bleak through an Instagram filter. The slow collapse of the social contract is the backdrop for a modern mania for clean eating, healthy living, personal productivity, and “radical self-love”—the insistence that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, we can achieve a meaningful existence by maintaining a positive outlook, following our bliss, and doing a few hamstring stretches as the planet burns. The more frightening the economic outlook and the more floodwaters rise, the more the public conversation is turning toward individual fulfillment as if in a desperate attempt to make us feel like we still have some control over our lives.

Coca-Cola encourages us to “choose happiness.” Politicians take time out from building careers in the debris of democracy to remind us of the importance of regular exercise. Lifestyle bloggers insist to hundreds of thousands of followers that freedom looks like a white woman practicing yoga alone on a beach. One such image (on the @selflovemantras Instagram) informs us that “the deeper the self love, the richer you are.” That’s a charming sentiment, but landlords are not currently collecting rent in self-love.

Can all this positive thinking be actively harmful? Carl Cederström and André Spicer, authors of The Wellness Syndrome, certainly think so, arguing that obsessive ritualization of self-care comes at the expense of collective engagement, collapsing every social problem into a personal quest for the good life. “Wellness,” they declare, “has become an ideology.”

The lexis of abuse and gas-lighting is appropriate here: Society is not mad or messed up, you are.

There is an obvious political dimension to the claim that wellbeing, with the right attitude, can be produced spontaneously. Months after being elected leader of the most right-wing government in recent British history, yogurt-featured erstwhile PR man David Cameron launched an ill-fated “happiness agenda.” The scheme may have been better received if the former prime minister were not simultaneously engaged in decimating health care, welfare, and higher education—the very social structures that make life manageable for ordinary British people. As part of Cameron’s changes to the welfare system, unemployment was rebranded as a psychological disorder. According to a study in the Medical Humanities journal, in the teeth of the longest and deepest recession in living memory, the jobless were encouraged to treat their “psychological resistance” to work by way of obligatory courses that encouraged them to adopt a jollier attitude toward their own immiseration. They were harangued with motivational text messages telling them to “smile at life” and that “success is the only option.”

This mode of coercion has been adopted by employers, too, as Cederström and Spicer note. Zero-hour-contract laborers in an Amazon warehouse, “although they are in a precarious situation . . . are required to hide these feelings and project a confident, upbeat, employable self.” All of which begs the question: Who exactly are we being well for?

The wellbeing ideology is a symptom of a broader political disease. The rigors of both work and worklessness, the colonization of every public space by private money, the precarity of daily living, and the growing impossibility of building any sort of community maroon each of us in our lonely struggle to survive. We are supposed to believe that we can only work to improve our lives on that same individual level. Chris Maisano concludes that while “the appeal of individualistic and therapeutic approaches to the problems of our time is not difficult to apprehend . . . it is only through the creation of solidarities that rebuild confidence in our collective capacity to change the world that their grip can be broken.”

The isolating ideology of wellness works against this sort of social change in two important ways. First, it persuades all us that if we are sick, sad, and exhausted, the problem isn’t one of economics. There is no structural imbalance, according to this view—there is only individual maladaption, requiring an individual response. The lexis of abuse and gas-lighting is appropriate here: if you are miserable or angry because your life is a constant struggle against privation or prejudice, the problem is always and only with you. Society is not mad, or messed up: you are.

Secondly, it prevents us from even considering a broader, more collective reaction to the crises of work, poverty, and injustice. That’s the logic exposed by personal productivity gurus like Mark Fritz, who tells us, in The Truth About Getting Things Done, that:

The biggest barrier to achieving the success you have defined for your life is never anyone else or the circumstances you encounter. Your biggest barrier is almost always you. . . . Dr Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho-Cybernetics [ETA: sounds legit to me!], put it best when he said, “Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you as soon as you can change your beliefs.

This, of course, is a cyclopean lie—but it’s a seductive one nonetheless. It would be nice to believe that all it takes to change your life is to repeat some affirmations and buy a planner, just as it was once comforting for many of us to trust that the hardships of this plane of existence would be rewarded by an eternity of bliss in heaven. There is a reason that the rituals of wellbeing and self-care are followed with the precision of a cult (do this and you will be saved; do this and you will be safe): It is a practice of faith. It’s worth remembering that Marx’s description of religion as the opiate of the masses is often misinterpreted—opium, at the time when Marx was writing, was not just known as an addictive drug, but as a painkiller, a solace when the work of survival became unbearable.

With the language of self-care and wellbeing almost entirely colonized by the political right, it is not surprising that progressives, liberals, and left-wing groups have begun to fetishize a species of abject hopelessness. Positive thinking has become deeply unfashionable. The American punk kids I know describe it, disparagingly, as “posi.” The British ones, of course, describe it as “American.” Whatever you call it, it feels a lot like giving in.

In a scintillating essay at Open Democracy, activist Chloe King writes that

changing your attitude is not going to change or help to dismantle structural injustice and a failed and unsustainable economic model which serves only the elite rich of this world, and exploits the rest of us, particularly the working class and those living in poverty. As far as I am concerned positive thinking will fucking ruin your life. “Just think positive” is a precursor to “it gets better,” and the hard reality is it is only going to get much, much worse for our most vulnerable.

There is truth here. What is also true, however, is that the young people I know who are, in general, the very worst at taking basic care of themselves as individuals—the people whose problem is not that they don’t drink enough asparagus water, but that they don’t drink enough of anything that isn’t day-old wine from a foil bag—are those who went through the student and Occupy uprisings of 2010–2012 and experienced, briefly, what it meant to live a different sort of life. What it meant to be part of a community with common goals of which mutual aid and support were not the least. What it meant to experience that sudden, brief respite from individual striving and build a prefigurative society together. The lonely work of taking basic care of yourself as you wait for the world to change is a poor substitute. When you’re washed up and burned out from putting your body on the line to fight the state, it’s especially galling to be told to share a smile and eat more whole grains.

Anxious millennials now seem to have a choice between desperate narcissism and crushing misery.

When modernity teaches us to loathe ourselves and then sells us quick fixes for despair, we can be forgiven for balking at the cash register. Anxious millennials now seem to have a choice between desperate narcissism and crushing misery. Which is better? The question is not rhetorical. On the one hand, Instagram happiness gurus make me want to drown myself in a kale smoothie. On the other, I’m sick and tired of seeing the most brilliant people I know, the fighters and artists and mad radical thinkers whose lives’ work might actually improve the world, treat themselves and each other in ludicrously awful ways with the excuse, implicit or explicit, that any other approach to life is counterrevolutionary.

Some of the left critique of self-care as a neoliberal conspiracy has to do with dismissing the work that women and queer people do to survive. “I have heard feminism be dismissed as a form of self-indulgence,” writes Professor Sara Ahmed of Goldsmiths, University of London. So have I. I’ve heard men on the left write off anti-sexist, anti-racist politics as hopelessly individualistic, whilst also refusing to do the basic work of self-care and mutual care that keeps hope alive and health possible, because that work is women’s work, undignified in comparison to watching your life fall apart while you wait for the revolution or for some girl to pick up the pieces, whichever comes first.

The left has a special talent for counterproductive, theory-enabled wallowing. “Neoliberalism sweeps up too much when all forms of self-care become symptoms of neoliberalism,” writes Ahmed. “When feminist, queer, and anti-racist work that involves sharing our feelings, our hurt and grief, recognizing that power gets right to the bone, is called neoliberalism, we have to hear what is not being heard. . . . A world against you can be experienced as your body turning against you. You might be worn down, worn out, by what you are required to take in.”

It is at this point that I confess to you that I’ve been doing yoga for two years and it’s changed my life to an extent that I almost resent. I have trained myself, through dedicated practice on and off the mat, to find enough inner strength not to burst out laughing when the instructor ends the class by declaring “let the light in me honor the light in you.” The instructor is a very nice person who smiles all the time like a drunk kindergarten teacher and could probably kill me with her abs alone, so I have refrained from informing her that the light in me is sometimes a government building on fire.

Downward-facing dog is not a radical position. Nonetheless, that particular asana is among a few small concessions I make to self-care while I wait for the end of patriarchy and the destruction of the money system. Overpriced charcoal health drinks aren’t good for liberating anything except your wallet and your colon in short succession, but walks in the park are free, so I occasionally go out in the sunshine and try to soak up a bit of Vitamin D without worrying about skin cancer, melting ice-caps, and millions of people drowning in Bangladesh. I no longer subsist entirely on chicken nuggets, cigarettes, and spite. I sometimes take a day off, because it became apparent that the revolution was not being driven any faster by my being sick and sad all the time. Late Capitalism is as good an excuse of any for not getting out of bed, but huddling under the covers worrying about Donald Trump is a very inefficient way of sticking it to the man.

Late Capitalism is as good an excuse of any for not getting out of bed, but huddling under the covers worrying about Donald Trump is a very inefficient way of sticking it to the man.

The problem with self-love as we currently understand it is in our view of love itself, defined, too simply and too often, as an extraordinary feeling that we respond to with hearts and flowers and fantasy, ritual consumption and affectless passion. Modernity would have us mooning after ourselves like heartsick, slightly creepy teenagers, taking selfies and telling ourselves how special and perfect we are. This is not real self-love, no more than a catcaller loves the woman whose backside he’s loudly admiring in the street.

The harder, duller work of self-care is about the everyday, impossible effort of getting up and getting through your life in a world that would prefer you cowed and compliant. A world whose abusive logic wants you to see no structural problems, but only problems with yourself, or with those more marginalized and vulnerable than you are. Real love, the kind that soothes and lasts, is not a feeling, but a verb, an action. It’s about what you do for another person over the course of days and weeks and years, the work put in to care and cathexis. That’s the kind of love we’re terribly bad at giving ourselves, especially on the left.

The broader left could learn a great deal from the queer community, which has long taken the attitude that caring for oneself and one’s friends in a world of prejudice is not an optional part of the struggle—in many ways, it is the struggle. Writer and trans icon Kate Bornstein’s rule number one is “Do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living. Just don’t be mean.” It’s more than likely that one of the reasons that the trans and queer communities continue to make such gains in culture, despite a violent backlash, is the broad recognition that self-care, mutual aid, and gentle support can be tools of resistance, too. After the Orlando massacre, LGBTQ people across the world started posting selfies under the hashtag #queerselflove. In the midst of the horror, the public mourning, and the fear, queer people of all ages and backgrounds across the world engaged in some light-hearted celebration of ourselves, of one another.

The ideology of wellbeing may be exploitative, and the tendency of the left to fetishize despair is understandable, but it is not acceptable—and if we waste energy hating ourselves, nothing’s ever going to change. If hope is too hard to manage, the least we can do is take basic care of ourselves. On my greyest days, I remind myself of the words of the poet and activist Audre Lorde, who knew a thing or two about survival in an inhuman world, and wrote that self care “is not self-indulgence—it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

Laurie Penny is a contributing editor at the New Statesman.

In his “Prize Essay on the Hindu System of Medicine,” published in the Guy’s Hospital Gazette (London) in 1889 and cited in Vasu’s 1915 foreword to the S ́ S, Major Basu asserts—in what is one of the very first public and international claims of tantric yoga’s scientific, medical status—that “better anatomy is given in the Tantras than in the medical works of the Hindus” (Vasu 1915 : i). According

to him, the Śiva Samhitā gives “a description of the several ganglia and plexuses of the nervous system” (i) and is proof that the Hindus were acquainted with the spinal cord, brain, and central nervous system. In this essay, and in a paper on the “Anatomy of the Tantras” published a year earlier in the Theosophist (March 1888), Basu commenced a mapping of tantric body symbolism onto Western anatomy that would keep the later pioneers of “scientific” haṭha yogic phenomena occupied for many decades to come. Kuvalayananda himself, indeed, identified Basu’s Theosophist article as “the oldest attempt in the direction of scientifically interpreting the Yogic anatomy” (1935: 3). It is here, perhaps, that for the first time a “scientific” attempt is made to “identify the Nâdîs, Chakras and Padmas ” of haṭha yoga with the conduits of the spine and the plexuses of the anatomical body—an identification that is still pervasive in popular transnational haṭha yoga today. Captain Basu’s enquiry is based on the eminently empirical, rationalistic question, “Are [the padmas and chakras ] real, or do they only exist in the imagination of the Tântrists?” (Vasu 1915 : ii). It is clear that for the “lotuses” and “wheels” of the hatha system to be taken seriously by his readers, they must be shown to have issued from protocientific observation rather than mere fancy (“imagination” here unmistakably connoting “nonrational”). On this basis, Basu professes, “we nevertheless believe that the Tântrists obtained their knowledge about them by dissection” (ii).

Contrary to Basu’s assertion, we should note, there is no evidence whatever that “Tântrists,” or any other religious group in India, ever engaged in the dissection of corpses. In fact, the first dissection by a Hindu was probably undertaken in 1836 by Madhusūdana Gupta in Calcutta (Wujastyk 2002 : 74). As Bharati writes, “Ancient Indians never opened up dead bodies to study organs empirically. . . . The horror of defilement and ritual pollution was so strong in India that anatomical and physiological experimentation seemed until recently out of the question” (1976: 165). As far back as 1670, indeed, Bernier had noted the same horror among Indians with regard to anatomical dissection (1968 [1670]: 339). Basu’s claim should therefore be understood as a projection of the scientific present onto the screen of tradition and as an expression of the modern need to view the haṭha yogic body as anatomical and “real.” It is this need that forms the impetus and rationale for the haṭha experimentation of the twentieth century.

This point can be illustrated further by a (possibly apocryphal) anecdote from the life of Hindu firebrand and founder of the Arya Samā j, Dayananda Saraswati (1824–1883). On a tour of India in 1855, Dayananda pulls a corpse from the river and dissects it to ascertain the truth of the tantric cakras he has been reading about. When his search fails, he scornfully tosses his yogic texts (including the Haṭha Yoga Pradı̄pikā ) into the water (Yadav 2003 [1976]: 46). His experiment leads him to “the conclusion that with the exception of the Vedas, Patanjali and Sankhya all other works on the science of yoga are false” (Yadav 2003 [1976]: 41). While Basu’s optimism and Dayananada’s pessimism regarding the truth-value of haṭha yogic texts are clearly at odds, they nonetheless have in common that they enthrone rational empiricism as monarch in the kingdom of yoga.

Both the failed search of 1855 and the confident credo of 1888 are modern projects that stand in a contradictory relationship with a traditional conception of the tantric body as a constructed, “entextualised” entity, in which “imagination becomes a kind of action . . . and the forms that the body takes in ritual are a kind of knowing” (Flood 2006: 6). From the tantric perspective, the cakras are simply not observable physical phenomena but inscribed ritual processes: a notion that has largely escaped the attention of popular writers on haṭha yoga from Basu onward. As Bharati argues, the yogic subtle body “is an object our imagination has to create” (1976: 164). This is not to say that cakras are not “real” in a very particular way: the point is that one would be hard-pressed to find them with a dissection scalpel or a camera. They are not, in other words, available for empirical or medical testing in the way that, say, ganglia are. As Wujastyk notes, the kind of thinking that prompts Dayananda to undertake his dissection, and which also lies behind Basu’s project to find cakras in plexuses, is based on the notion that the world is one and that the traditional and modern explanations of it are both true and can be made to coincide (2002: 75). Such thinking informs research on the yogic body through the twentieth century, from Kuvalayananda’s physiological experiments “between science and philosophy” in the 1920s and 1930s (Alter 2004a) up to and beyond Hiroshi Motoyama’s cakra-detecting machines of the 1970s and 1980s (Motoyama 1981 ).

Another vitally important early moment in the reconciliation of tradition and science is A Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy by Dr. N. C. Paul (also known as Navı̄na Candra Pāla), originally published in 1850 but saved from obscurity by the Theosophical Society reprint of 1888. Perhaps even more than Basu’s work, this study might be credited as the fi rst attempt to marry haṭ ha yoga practice and theory with modern medical science. Paul considers haṭha yogic suspension of the breath and the circulation of blood in Western medical terms, once again (like Vasu) evoking the interment of the guru Haridas as the paradigm of yogic physiological control (Paul 1888 [1850] : 49–50). As Blavatsky notes, the book’s appearance in 1850 “produced a sensation amongst the representatives of medicine in India, and a lively polemic between the Anglo-Indian and native journalists” (Neff and Blavatsky 1937 : 94–95). Copies were even burned on the grounds that the text was “offensive to the science of physiology and pathology” (95). However, its republication by the Theosophical Society, in the same year as Basu’s seminal article in the Society’s journal, relaunched it as a key text in the early formulation of haṭ ha yoga as science, and it was used as an authoritative source on haṭha yoga by some European scholars. For example, Hermann Walter’s 1893 dissertation on the Haṭhayogapradı̄pikā at the University of Munich is, like Paul’s work, greatly concerned with the “extent to which the chakras correspond to an anatomical reality” (1893: xv, my trans.). He notes the enormous therapeutic potential that an investigation into these matters might yield. Paul’s book, he declares, is “the only work that goes into more detail on the topic [of haṭha yoga and anatomy]” (1893: i) and he seems to derive his notion of the potential medical applications offered by haṭha yoga principally from Paul’s book.

Significantly, Paul did not glean his information about yoga directly from Indian yogins themselves but from textual sources and from one Captain Seymour, who had deserted the British army and escaped several mental institutions in England to “[become] a Yogi” (Neff and Blavatsky 1937 : 95). It may indeed seem ironic that this earliest study of haṭha yoga as medical science is based on the account of a “gone-native” English informant as recorded by anglicized Indian, but it is nonetheless typical of the way modern, anglophone interpretations of yoga are filtered through apparently disparate cultural lenses, and of the lack of direct ethnographic contact and engagement with lineages of practicing yogins. Apart from Paul’s mediated experience of yogins through Seymour, information about haṭ ha yoga practice in this period tends to remain exclusively textual.

If I were to mark the following précis of what the Commission heard with citation links, the whole section would be burning red. Instead, I’ll limit in-text citations to the date and page number of the Commission transcripts, and then provide links to the open public sources beneath this post. The news media articles give simplified reports that are easy to navigate, but also fragmentary and somewhat repetitive. The most important sources are the transcripts themselves – documents that are riveting both for their horror and for the bravery of the witnesses who have finally been given a public forum.

  Details Regarding the Abuse of Children at Mangrove Mountain

Not everything the Commission heard was news. Much of the testimony detailed the psychopathology of Swami Akhandananda Saraswati, the spiritual director of Mangrove Mountain beginning in 1974. Born in Orissa India in approximately 1942, Akhandananda was personally appointed by Swami Satyananda Saraswati to head up his Australian mission. In 1987, Akhandananda was charged with 35 counts of sexual offences against four underage girls. In 1989, he was convicted and imprisoned for fourteen months before the Australian High Court overturned the decision on a technicality. Akhandananda was released and died of alcoholism in 1997 or 1998.

Akhandananda’s name has been expunged from the websites of the International Yoga Fellowship – Satyananda’s India-based umbrella organization – but not from the memories of his victims. The Commission heard from child survivors Alecia Buchanan, Jyoti, Bhakti Manning, Tim Clark, and anonymous witnesses APL, APK, APA, APH, and APR about rape, sexual assault, physical beatings and psychological torture at the hands of Akhandananda and his long-term female partner, Shishy. Shishy offered a strained defense of her admitted brutality by testifying that she herself had felt sexually intimidated by Akhandananda from the time of meeting him at the age of sixteen, and that she endured harsher and harsher treatment from him as time progressed, culminating in rapes involving firearms and genital mutilation. (108:11272-3)

The former child residents of Mangrove Mountain presented detailed narratives of their lives under Akhandananda and Shishy in chapters that seemed to alternate between Dickens and de Sade. They described how Mangrove Mountain was sustained and enriched on the unpaid labour of devotees committed to the ideal of sannyas, or ascetic renunciation. Upon entrance, residents gave up possessions and property, and took vows of celibacy that their directors’ lifestyle openly mocked. As though children were “property” to renounce, the parents of many Commission witnesses signed documents entrusting custody of their children to Akhandananda and Shishy, along with access to their child welfare benefits. (105:10930; 104:10836)

Witnesses testified to a labour-camp schedule of 4am to 10pm days packed with cleaning, cooking, gardening, yoga, and meditation. Up to 120 residents competed for hot showers permitted during one hour of the day. (105:10952) Food was often scarce, protein-deficient, and sometimes withheld from the children as punishment for trifling infractions. Medical care often consisted of pseudo-Ayurvedic quackery. Alecia Buchanan recalls being prescribed black tea with chili, garlic and ginger for hemorrhaging that she believed resulted from being raped by Akhandananda at the age of sixteen. (104:10873) Anonymous witness APR testifies to a terrifying “Lord of the Flies” environment in which ashram children were allowed to brutalize each other, were routinely drugged with morphine for minor ailments, and were given illegal hallucinogenics imported from India in such heavy doses that they would collapse in the bathroom stalls. (106:11089-90)

For over twenty-five years, the administration at Mangrove Mountain – now a mixture of older and newer residents – has consistently denied responsibility for aiding and abetting the abuses of Akhandananda and Shishy, and failing to protect the children. Anticipating the attention of the Royal Commission, the ashram has over the last year staged several fumbling attempts at reconciliation with former child victims, only to then threaten them with libel action when they began to tell their stories openly on social media. But at the Commission, Mangrove Mountain lawyer Aaron Kernaghan delivered a general statement of apology and regret on behalf of the community.

This shard of light may have only aggravated the wound. In the view of many victims, much of the adult community of the time was guilty of abandonment and collusion. Former child resident Alecia Buchanan testified that Shishy was often in the room while Akhandananda raped her. Buchanan was 15 when it began. She also said: “Looking back now, I’m certain some adults at the ashram knew Akhandananda was abusing us girls. We were always coming and going from his hut and other people saw this happening. We were often summoned very publicly over the loudspeaker by the receptionist or by Shishy’s personal assistant, Muktimurti, words to the effect of, ‘Shantibodh, go to swamiji’s office’ late at night.” [emphasis added] (104:10875) Speaking before the Commission, Muktimurti, now in her late fifties, denied any knowledge of abuse in her testimony, even as numerous witnesses testified to her presence during beatings or public humiliations of the children. (109:11424-5) In 1987, Muktimurti testified for the defense in Akhandananda’s trial.

Former child resident Jyoti testified that at the age of 17, after having been raped by Akhandananda while they visited an ashram in Canberra together, she was dismissed from his room and had “to walk through the lounge room of the flat where the other people were sleeping. Those people were adults. There is no way they wouldn’t have worked out what was going on.”

“The next morning,” her testimony continues, “I had breakfast with Akhandananda and the other swamis in the flat. While we were eating, Akhandananda started saying silly things with sexual innuendo, like, “Oh, Jyoti likes sausages, don’t you’, and joking with the other swamis.” (104:10909)

  “While he listened to All-India News”: Testimony Against Swami Satyananda

Again, the general tenor of Akhandananda’s abuse is already part of the public record, albeit from the pre-internet era of his trial. The more pressing news, which is currently ripping the global organization to shreds from the inside out, and which should also be giving grave pause to the entire modern yoga world, is that there is now testimony that Akhandananda was taking the lead in abusing women and children from his own guru, Satyananda, who died in 2009.

Shishy testified that in 1976, Satyananda arrived at Mangrove Mountain for a yoga convention, and that Akhandananda arranged for her to serve the great guru sexually. At the time, Satyananda – a self-proclaimed celibate and staunch advocate for celibacy amongst his followers – was travelling with another sexual partner, Amrityananda, who would be sleeping in the same room as the rapes occurred. Shishy felt confused and conflicted about the scenario, but also recognized it as similar to her own presence in Akhandananda’s quarters while he raped others. Shishy went on to testify how she was expected to serve Satyananda sexually whenever he was visiting Australia, or whenever she travelled to the ashram in Munger. (107:11164)

Mangrove Mountain seems to have served in part as a recruitment centre for women to be groomed as temporary or intermittent sexual partners for Satyananda. Victims were encouraged to believe that being raped by progressively more powerful men in the organization signified their increasing spiritual attainment. In brave and frank testimony, former child resident Bhakti Manning described how, after being initiated into sexual compliance by Akhandananda at the age of 15, she was also pressured into intercourse with another visiting Swami from India named Gorakhnath in late 1975.

In October of 1976, Satyananda visited from India to attend a convention in Sydney. “During the convention”, Manning testified, “I asked Satyananda for my ‘mantra diksha’, which are the words you do your meditation with. He asked if anyone had given me a mantra before, and I said that Akhandananda and Gorakhnath had. Satyananda then said words to the effect of, ‘Well, you started with Swami Gorakhnath and Akhandananda and you will continue with me.’ Later at Mangrove ashram, I asked him if I could live in the ashram in Munger, India, and he said, ‘Are you married?’ I said, ‘No.’ Then he said, ‘Yes, you can come to India.’ (105:11031)

Manning testified that she worked in an administrative role at the Munger ashram for seven years while also serving as one of Satyananda’s sexual partners. She came to feel that his earlier reference to training with Akhandananda and Gorakhnath did not refer to mantra at all, but to sexual servitude.

Manning testified that she believed that the many women who surrounded Satyananda at the Munger ashram were his sexual partners, and that their social power at the ashram depended upon his favour. She also described Satyananda’s sexual tastes as violent and humiliating:

_____

Manning: I think by the time I arrived in India, Swami Satyananda realised that physical violence was not the best way of manipulating people. He had refined his act. I am talking about sexual activity which was far from loving. Would you like me to – where you were told what position to assume, what to do, where – I remember on occasion when I was told to go and wash myself afterwards, I couldn’t walk.

Ms. McGlinchey (Shishy’s lawyer): Are we talking about very aggressive violent sex?

Manning: Aggressive violent sex.

McGlinchey: I’m not asking you to go into details, but involving what we might generally say as perverted acts?

Manning: Oh, I don’t say it was perverted. I just say that it was ‐ I was told what position to assume, and that may have been like on all fours with a heavy man on top of me when I weighed 47 kilos and had regular dysentery and diarrhea and it was just physically extremely exhausting to do those things. I recall times where I got genital herpes from him and I had been instructed to face his feet and straddle him that way. He must have noticed that there was something on my skin, and he just took a torch and shone it in my anus area, without saying anything. I recall having my head pushed under and told to take him in my mouth and him putting his toes in my vagina while he listened to All India Radio News….”

(106:11062-3)

____ 

  As with the experience of Alecia Buchanan and others with Akhandananda, Satyananda’s assaults were an open secret, according to testimony heard by the Commission. “On one occasion” Manning testified, “[Satyananda and I] had sex in the same room as older, senior female swamis. Often we had sex when one of the female swamis in particular, his constant companion at the time, was in the room.” (105: 11033) She testified that from as early as 1977 she was having various psychotic and paranoid symptoms resulting from the abuse. By the end of her tenure in Munger in 1983, Manning testified that she also began a sexual relationship with Swami Niranjananda that lasted a year. Niranjananda, also a purported celibate, took over the directorship of the Munger ashram that year, and today serves as the spiritual leader of the global movement. In her testimony, Manning did not indicate that her relationship with Niranjananda was non-consensual.

Satyananda’s alleged sexual crimes may have also involved young children. Anonymous witness APR remembers being raped and mutilated by Akhandananda and five or six other men in a public ritual at the age of six. Approximately a year later, Satyananda visited Mangrove Mountain, and subjected APR to another “initiation”. She reports: “For years I have had involuntary physical reactions to images of Satyananda. I have a non-distinct memory of my initiation involving more than the transfer of energy and the giving of a new name. I have impressions of him being on top of me; it makes me nauseous, but for years I have swatted away the thought that he had raped me, as my entire childhood I was raised to believe he was like God, pure love.” (106: 11093-4)

There is at least one other published account of Satyananda’s abuse, although it is not part of the Royal Commission’s documents, and it is not presented as a direct allegation. It comes from a woman named Janaki Vunderink, who in August 2013 posted this description of living in Satyananda’s ashram in Munger, starting at the age of fourteen in 1967, and staying through her nineteenth year. In this deeply intimate account of her spiritual journey, Vunderink hints at having had a confusing sexual relationship with the guru. “As it turned out,” she writes, “Satyananda was a very hostile and aggressive man, driven by lust.”

Vunderink had actually written about this encounter before, but without having named Satyananda explicitly. In 1993, she published a more detailed account of her experience at Munger. The article is in Dutch: “Opgroein in een Ashram als je 14 bent” (“Growing Up in an Indian Ashram at Age 14”) in The Willem de Ridder Papers (August 1993): 33-37. In 2001, Vunderink translated parts of this story into English for inclusion in Sarah Caldwell’s study in the anthropology of religion “The Heart of the Secret: A Personal and Scholarly Encounter with Shakta Tantrism in Siddha Yoga”. Here’s the most relevant passage. Note that this account recalls experiences dated to several years before the experiences testified to by Buchanan and Manning:

Janaki was first taken to India as a young girl, accompanying her mother, who was studying yoga in an ashram. She describes the slow process of her socialization in the ashram, eventually leading, in her young teens, to the guru’s introducing her to his sexual practices. At first these seemed innocent enough, cuddling and lying beside the guru with another girl. But after some months the guru’s sexual depravities began to show, as he forced the girls into nightly sexual relations with himself and eventually with young boys, whom he said he could control through their sexual slavery. He would watch through a keyhole while the orgies were conducted. He asked if she loved him and if she would do anything for him. When she answered she would, he then asked her, “Would you have sex with a dog?” There was no way she could go back on her word and felt she would rather die than displease him. Once she took rat poison because she felt her guru hadn’t been paying enough attention to her. When he found out he became extremely angry and beat her severely, shouting that if she were to die it would destroy his mission. Janaki began to see that the guru she had loved and idolized through her teen years was focused entirely on sex and power. Yet this same guru was widely revered, sought out as a master of hatha yoga and meditation, and treated with great respect in India. His depraved personal life seemed to bear no relation to his public status. (Caldwell, 42)

  Some Thoughts for Satyananda Yoga Outsiders

For ten years, I’ve carried around a little blue book called Yoga Nidra, written by (or transcribed from talks by) Swami Satyananda. It was produced by the Yoga Publications Trust. At home, it sits on my shelf beside at least twenty other YPT volumes, with their primary-colour spines flashing like a row of crayons. Yoga Nidra details a technique I first learned and fell in love with during a yoga therapy training in California. The practice has been profound for me in many ways.

But I don’t know how I can continue to use this method, much less teach it to my students, now that this testimony against Satyananda has accumulated. The notion of leading people into a vulnerable, trance-like state by using a technique that was invented by an alleged rapist who then validated it by correlation with obscure medieval sources is intolerable to me. The power and utility of the methods emerging from Satyananda’s legacy rest on an implicit appreciation of the man’s integrity, which is now under serious attack.

Fatal attack, actually. The widely supported finding that only 2% of rape accusations are false should compel anyone interested in this story to presume that Shishy, Bhakti Manning, APR and Janaki are extremely likely to be telling the truth about their encounters with Satyananda. Dismissing this presumption is a failure of critical thinking complicitous with global rape culture.

For those of us who would like to lend support to the victims in their difficult healing process, I suggest the following actions.

As stated above, at minimum, yoga practitioners throughout the world can boycott all products and methods of the Satyananda global organization, until:

the Satyananda headquarters at Munger uses the resources at its disposal — especially donation streams from its hundreds of satellite ashrams worldwide — to fund an independent investigation of the current testimony, and also endeavours to document possible abuses in other ashrams that Satyananda traveled to throughout the world, and

allocates reparation money to the survivors of the court-proven sexual abuses of Akhandananda in Australia, and

creates an escrow fund that anticipates reparation payments to those who are yet to come forward as victims of abuse by Satyananda and any other authority figure in the organization.

I would also like to propose two ideas in relation to these horrors to enhance the safe learning environments that yogic inquiry demands:

If you are a teacher of Satyananda/Bihar Yoga School techniques – and especially if you have gained professional prestige from your use of them – it would be wise to issue a personal statement of acknowledgement of the abuses both proven and testified to, and to describe what you are doing to assure the safety of your students. This would apply to anyone who teaches the highly popular Yoga Nidra technique, for example. Or anyone who uses any of the highly influential YPT publications such as Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha and the Muktibhodananda translation of Hatha Yoga Pradipika. This acknowledgement can occur in conjunction with creating and publicizing a system for ensuring safe learning spaces for everyone.

Because robust testimony against the late Satyananda and now some testimony about his successor Niranjananda call their integrity into question, it might be a good idea if the proposed boycott of all Satyananda-related books and methods continues until an independent commission of scholars is able to assess the accuracy of claims concerning the origins of the practices. These techniques are aimed at deep psycho-spiritual targets. Being confident that they are not the fabrications of rapists and their enablers would be a good thing.

It’s important to note that the work of the Commission is by no means finished, and the responses to the testimony it has collected from the current Mangrove Mountain administration and Munger are still emerging. The Commission’s Counsel Assisting is drafting a submission for release on January 30, 2015. After this, all parties concerned will have four weeks to respond to these preliminary findings. The Commission will reconvene in March.

Mangrove Mountain lawyer Aaron Kernaghan writes via email that he anticipates his clients releasing “a comprehensive statement” in response to the Counsel Assisting’s submission. Kernaghan also notes that “in addition to the oral testimony given during the hearing, there is a large quantity of documentary evidence (including additional statements from witnesses not called)…. Those documents are currently the subject of a non-publication order.” Also, every day, dozens of documents are being added to the Royal Commissions Exhibits Page for the case. In short: the story will continue to unfold.

Munger’s initial email response to the anticipated testimony of the Mangrove Mountain residents to the Royal Commission (dated October 7, 2014: see Appendix #1 below) leaves much to be desired. It appears that Munger would have initially preferred to simply amputate Mangrove Mountain than take any responsibility for the actions of its leadership. However, a second, more conciliatory email from Swami Niranjananda and the Bihar School of Yoga was read aloud by their lawyer on the final day of testimony (Appendix #2). Unfortunately, this second statement does not reference any of the testimony against Satyananda.

In considering this proposed boycott it should be noted that the Mangrove Mountain ashram can not on its own afford appropriate reparations to its victims, as it currently holds only 5.6M AUD in assets on paper, as per the testimony of Sarah Tetlow, who has been the CEO of the ashram for the past year. (110:11508) If victims are to be compensated, it will have to come from Munger.

A Broader Message for Yoga Teachers: Your Lineage Provides No Cover

Beyond these rather baseline proposals to help remedy this specific outrage, the lesson for other schools and lineages should finally be clear.

Your lineage doesn’t matter now. The history of your school doesn’t matter now. The name, purported attainments, cultural heritage and robes of your guru are no guarantee of integrity or safety. Even if you feel you stand confidently as part of a long line of ethical teachers, the well of faith in global yoga institutions has been irretrievably fouled, and the best way to prove your integrity as a practitioner is by showing what you do, exactly. You have to demonstrate the difference between communication and mystification. You have to demonstrate the difference between charisma and intimacy.

The venerable structure of parampara is surely still functional in some places. But far too many brands of modern yoga that have globalized can no longer claim any history of enlightened inheritance, either because of malfeasance in leadership or the blatant dishonesty of their claims. The parade of infamy is long and well-known: there’s no need to mention other organizations on the same page as the horrors at Mangrove Mountain.

Suffice to say: too many global brands of modern yoga are stained with scandal on a scale ranging from venal to obscene to abject. This does not mean that these organizations and their members haven’t been able to improve their transparency in the wake of failures, or that they don’t do good things in the world. But it does mean that all yoga schools — like all other institutes of higher learning — should at long last be disqualified as objects of faith.

If as a teacher you rely on the of any of these organizations or guru-legacies to enhance or secure your authority, it is clearly in the interest of your integrity and the health of the broader culture to be transparent about how you understand and position yourself in relation to their shadows. If you don’t, you really have no right to be taken seriously as someone who can provide care to others.

No one in yoga culture deserves anyone’s faith. Teachers deserve our inquiry. Where they come from and what devotees say about them is very thin gruel. You will know them by their fruits.

While nothing can fully atone for the grief of the former residents of Mangrove Mountain, the critical thinking and existential honesty that could arise out of this “never again” story might be a very good thing for yoga practitioners of the future.

  _______

  PLEASE NOTE: Comments that seek to correct any factual errors in this account are most welcome, and I will amend the text if necessary. Comments that claim to provide additional evidence will be published, but readers should understand that these may be uncorroborated. Comments that attack the integrity of the former child residents of Mangrove Mountain will not be published. Abusive comments will not be published. Any comments or messages of a threatening nature will not be published, and will be immediately reported to the appropriate authorities along with the I.P. addresses of the senders.

  Appendix #1: Excerpts from an email from the Munger Administration to Mangrove Mountain, 10/7/2014

All his life Swami Niranjan has worked for the betterment of Satyananda yoga and his guru’s mission. In all its difficulties, problems and strife, he has supported Mangrove Mountain and the Satyananda yoga movement in Australia.

But these recent actions of Australia have shown that the institutions and the people involved have no respect for the support and encouragement given. What has been shown is that Australia is willing and happy to hide behind guru’s dhoti and suffer the ‘swamiji says syndrome’. Administrators of the institution are willing to involve him in the investigation of 20 year old sex scandals and tarnish his reputation, where they [did] not even dare to put their own names on behalf of the institution.

From our perspective there is no accountability or concern for yoga in Australia. No-one is prepared to take responsibility for the situation and events which are occurring.

After a lifetime in support of Australia, Swami Niranjan and Bihar School of Yoga indisgust withdraw their association and support completely from SYAA [Satyananda Yoga Academy Australia], SRI and YAMM [Yoga Association of Mangrove Mountain]. (110:11511)

  Appendix #2: Statement read by Alex Terracini, lawyer for Bihar School of Yoga and Swami Niranjananda (110:11589-90)

Firstly, we wish to thank the Royal Commission for agreeing to our request for leave to appear. We have only recently become aware of the allegations regarding individuals in India and consequently our entry into the Commission process occurred only a few days prior to its commencement.

At the outset we wish to state that we support the work of the Commission in its investigations. We acknowledge the sexual abuse committed by Akhandananda in the 1970s and 1980s at the Mangrove Mountain yoga ashram in Australia. We havelistened to the stories of the victims, and we now endeavour to understand the trauma they have suffered and still suffer today. We have not wished to interrupt, broach, object or question any statements the victims as they recount their understanding of events. We have silent out of respect and concern Commission process be honoured.

It is only due to the courage and determination of the survivors intheir truths, and coming forward to be heard and to report experiences, that we have learnt the truth about the sexual abuse perpetrated at Mangrove Mountain in the 1980s and 1970s. Until the evidence presented during this Commission, the Bihar School of Yoga did not know the appalling extent of the abuse nor how widespread it was. We had not heard the stories which revealed the horrific nature and severity of the abuse. We did not understand the isolation and shame that has been the burden carried by the survivors for so many years, because their stories had not been heard and the harm done to them had not been acknowledged.

We are deeply shocked and saddened by the stories of the victims and the appalling destruction of their trust and faith of the actions of Akhandananda and Shishy, all this under the guise of the mission of yoga and spiritual life. Until now we’ve been under the misapprehension that the matter had simply been resolved by the criminal justice system, and after the incarceration of the perpetrator, the interests of justice had been served. We recognise now that nobody addressed the hurt, the shame and the harm that had been the ongoing effect of the abuse and the impact that the abuse had had on its victims, their families and indeed the whole organisation.

It is a matter of great distress and sadness that the yogic principles which we believe in and work for have been so grossly misused and maligned. The foundation of the yogic approach of life is based on ahimsa, an attitude of non‐violence to all living beings. Those who perpetrated acts of sexual, physical, emotional violence have not only completely failed to express anything of yoga in their lives; they have failed to express any fundamental human dignity or quality whatsoever. We sincerely hope that through the wisdom received by this Royal Commission, the hearing of the evidence, reconciliation for the victims of abuse can begin. We are deeply concerned and hope that the findings of this Commission posit improvements and processes within institutions which will ensure the health, safety, sanctity and dignity of all children. Thank you.

  Notes:

Epigraph from Swami Niranjananda: http://www.biharyoga.net/living-yoga/message-from-swan/

Epigraph from Swami Sivananda: http://www.dlshq.org/download/yogadaily.htm#_VPID_9

Caldwell, Sarah. The Heart of the Secret: A Personal and Scholarly Encounter with Shakta Tantrism in Siddha Yoga. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 5, No. 1 (October 2001).

  Links:

(The following is a list created for the Facebook group “Satyananda Yoga – Reveal the Truth”)

Royal Commission Transcripts / Exhibits

http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-study/bc75afe3-4a12-41be-983d-f9db256f6260/case-study-21,-december-2014,-sydney

Support services for sexual abuse survivors 

http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/support-services

Australia news:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/02/ashram-apologises-to-child-sexual-abuse-victims-it-threatened-to-sue

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/global-yoga-guru-was-a-violent-sexual-abuser-royal-commission-told-20141204-11zybd.html

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/ashram-children-starved-drugged-tortured-royal-commission-hears-20141203-11z3mb.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/gurus-gods-to-abused-children-at-nsw-ashram/story-fngburq5-1227142044549

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/yoga-guru-plotted-to-murder-child-sex-victim-abuse-commission-hears/story-e6frg6nf-1227143609652

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/yoga-guru-may-have-raped-seven-year-old-royal-commission-told/story-e6frg6nf-1227144720052

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-04/victim-recounts-being-raped-during-ritual-at-satyananda-ashram/5945010

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-04/child-abuse-royal-commission-satyananda-yoga-ashram/5935968

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sexual-abuse-rife-at-yoga-group-royal-commission-hears-20141204-1202bt.html

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/05/yoga-gurus-handmaiden-sex-14-year-old-boy-commission

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-08/child-abuse-royal-commission-shishy-denies-procuring-girls-/5951786

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/05/yoga-ashram-abuse-gurus-handmaiden-desperately-sorry-for-beating-children

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/wild-sex-and-abortions-at-ashram-abuse-royal-commission-told/story-fngburq5-1227145298339

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2014/12/08/00/07/ashram-child-abuse-inquiry-continues

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/yogis-son-tells-of-bad-apple-at-ashram/story-fngburq5-1227146486153

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/royal-commission-threat-to-kill-satyananda-ashram-whistleblower-shishy-20141208-122g9t.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/yoga-gurus-disciple-tells-of-being-abused-with-loaded-gun/story-fngburq5-1227149058016

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-08/child-abuse-royal-commission-shishy-denies-procuring-girls-/5951786

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/doctor-saw-nothing-wrong-happening-at-sydney-ashram-where-children-were-raped-and-beaten/story-fnii5s3y-1227149797787

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/09/doctor-denies-over-prescribing-morphine-to-children-at-yoga-ashram

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-09/royal-commission-yoga-ashram-should-not-be-held-to-ransom/5955732

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/ashram-devotee-not-sure-if-child-sex-abuse-happened/story-fngburq5-1227149853651

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/royal-commission-witness-casts-doubts-over-abuse-20141209-1237cg.html

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2014/12/09/nsw-ashram-blame-abuse/

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/indian-bosses-give-mangrove-mountain-ashram-a-slap-in-the-face/story-fni0cx12-1227151348279

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/satyananda-ashram-sex-abuse-victims-want-1-million-in-compensation-20141210-123zz2.html

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2014/12/10/ashram-suffered–swamiji-says–syndrome.html

http://www.news.com.au/national/children-were-raped-beaten-and-drugged-at-mangrove-yoga-ashram-say-victims-at-royal-commission-into-child-sexual-abuse/story-fncynjr2-1227151800583

http://www.abc.net.au/nhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-10/satyananda-yoga-ashram-apologises-abuse-victims-royal-commission/5957262n/5957262

UK news:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11273299/Yoga-guru-was-violent-sexual-abuser-Australia-royal-commission-told.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2860429/Brutal-initiation-ceremony-Satyananda-yoga-movement-saw-seven-year-old-girl-sexually-assaulted-leader-licked-blood.html

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/04/yoga-ashram-didnt-consider-sex-abuse-crime-royal-commission

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2864975/Woman-claims-yoga-ashram-leader-sexually-assaulted-shotgun-forced-drink-urine-form-contraception.html

USA news:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/141205/australian-inquiry-hears-child-rape-at-yoga-ashram

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/australia-s-underage-yoga-sex-cult-the-survivors-speak-out.html

India news:

http://www.indiawest.com/news/global_indian/panel-hears-of-child-sexual-abuse-at-australian-ashram/article_20fdda80-7af8-11e4-bdc2-9f9d121687ad.html

http://www.thehindu.com/news/probe-into-child-abuse-at-australia-ashram/article6659177.ece

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/other-news/Hearing-of-Indian-ashram-sex-abuse-cases-in-Australia/articleshow/45357292.cms

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/children-drugged-tortured-at-indian-yoga-guru-s-ashram-in-australia/article1-1292889.aspx

http://www.amarujala.com/feature/crime-bureau/sex-crime/children-drugged-tortured-and-raped-by-yoga-guru-hindi-news-bm/

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/violent-discipline-was-acceptable-in-satyananda-yoga-ashram-culture-ex-member_1509928.html

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/children-drugged-sexually-abused-at-indian-yoga-gurus-ashram-in-australia_1508975.html

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/australian-inquiry-hears-of-child-rape-at-yoga-ashram_1509779.html

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/mangrove-mountain-ashrams-handmaiden-claims-guru-raped-her-with-gun_1511461.html

http://www.adeptpage.com/in/viewpost.aspx?q=fS1436gaCJk=&src=IndiaTopStories

http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/children-starved-drugged-tortured-at-aus-ashram-commission-114120300886_1.html

http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/World/20141202/2504549.html

http://www.newkerala.com/news/2014/fullnews-136211.html

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/chandigarh/children-starved-drugged-tortured-at-aus-ashram-commission/14067.html

Audio:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-04/ashram-life-was-like-lord-of-the-flies-for/5945220

Video/TV Report

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4146412.htm

Blogs/Opinion:

http://t.co/4tpJFH0RIv (Long url: http://estherrockett.com/2014/12/07/satyananda-yoga-mangrove-mountain-ashram-under-child-abuse-royal-commission-scrutiny/)

http://northwoodssaveachild.blogspot.jp/

http://guardianlv.com/2014/12/yoga-can-it-be-tainted-by-faulty-leaders/

http://janakisblog.wordpress.com/

http://mindful-yoga.blogspot.gr/2014/12/when-guru-rapes-reprise.html

http://mindful-yoga.blogspot.gr/2013/10/when-master-rapes.html

Other documents:

 Phil Hine

“The most immediate and concrete means of persuading people of the reality of divine power is to involve their bodies.” Thomas Csordas, Somatic Modes of Attention

I’m going to progress this series by considering various themes related to the “tantric” body-in-practice. This is a massive subject, and I’ll begin by outlining what I mean by the “body-in-practice” and why this is a useful way of considering practice(see Tantra keywords: Embodied for some earlier reflections). Attempting to discuss the various different modes of tantra practice can be a tricky proposition, as it is, I often find, difficult to seperate them easily – as they work across different domains. In exploring Nyasa for example, at some point one will have to deal with how nyasa intersects with mantra-vidya. In considering mudras, it might be desirable to discuss how mudras ‘work’ across several registers simultaneously – from the broadly cosmological, the social, and the personal; as energetic movements through space and and at the same time, public, dialogical gestures.

One of the problems I find in discussing tantric body-practices is the western tendency to draw a sharp distinction between domains such as mind vs. body, personal vs. social, cognitive vs. emotional, physical vs. spiritual, etc. – as such distinctions are not really made in India (or at least, not quite in the same way). In India, many practices are undertaken with the aim of cultivating a particular kind of body in ways that cross all these “boundaries” – and I feel that it is a mistake to try and interpret them within the limits of one particular domain. Neither practices nor the body are “static” objects. Practices require some measure of understanding [of the underlying “theory”] to be performed effectively, yet at the same time, practice shapes and modifies that understanding; as does anything else which may be related to it – from a conversation with a teacher to a chance encounter; an act of reading or a sudden epiphany.

In a previous post in this series I mentioned briefly the work of performance theorist Phillip B. Zarilli, from whom I have drawn the term ‘body-in-practice’.

In the introduction (pp5-11) to his 1998 performance enthnography of Kalarippayattu, a South Indian martial art, Zarilli makes some key statements for approaching both bodies and practices in relation to each other. I’ll summarise what I think are the salient points.

Zarilli begins by defining practices as: “those modes of embodied doing through which everyday as well as extra-daily experiences, realities and meanings are shaped and negotiated.”

The key phrase here is “embodied doing” – practices happen within and through the body – rooted in what Thomas Csordas terms “somatic modes of attention” – which is to say, they are “culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body in surroundings that include the embodied presence of others” (see this post for a brief discussion of the distinction between daily and extra-daily practices).

Zarilli continues: “Because practices are not things, but an active, embodied doing, they are intersections where personal, social and cosmological experiences and realities are negotiated. To examine a practice is to examine these multiple sets of relationships and experiences.”

Again, this is a useful point for thinking around tantra practices – which frequently act simultaneously across “social and cosmological experiences and realities”.

“Martial arts, like other overt techniques of disciplining the body, including aerobics, weight training, contact improvisation, etc. are ‘incorporating practices’ through which the body, and therefore experience and meaning are ‘culturally shaped in its actual practices and behaviours’ … These are ‘technologies’ [of the body] in Foucault’s sense, i.e. practices through which ‘humans develop knowledge about themselves’.”

‘Incorporating practices’ is a term coined by Paul Connerton (1989). Briefly, Connerton distinguishes between two modes of inter-related “memory” practices – inscribing practices and incorporating practices. Inscribing practices refers to those actions whereby information is stored on various types of media (print, photographs, etc.) and incorporating practices which are somatically remembered and expressed – through gestures and postures, modes of dress, etc. Connerton argues that incorporating practices do not exist “objectively” apart from their performance, and that we acquire and perform them, for the most part, without too much in the way of conscious reflection on the doing of them.

Obviously tantra practices are not the same as martial arts, although in Zarilli’s ethnographic account of Kalarippayattu there are some themes common to both kinds of practice. But more importantly, Zarilli is drawing attention to the intersection between body-self cultivation, the interpretation of experience, generation of meaning and the influence of culture which encompasses these processes.

“Psychophysiological techniques are practised in order for the practitioner to be transformed to attain a certain normative and idealized relationship between the ‘self’, ‘agency’, ‘power’ and ‘behaviour’. Ideally, the practitioner’s ‘self’ is reconstituted through long-term practice to achieve agency, power and a type of behaviour which can be deployed personally, socially, even cosmologically. Such a transformation can only be actualised through the body-in-practice.”

Conscious of the western tendency to reify categories such as ‘self’, ‘agency’, ‘power’ etc., Zarilli points out that these are not stable objects, and should always be considered as provisional. Drawing on the work of Dorrine Kondo, he asserts that ‘self’, ‘agency’, etc., should be approached as ‘nodal points’ – in her words: “Rather than bounded, essential entities, replete with a unitary substance and consciousness, identities become rhetorical figures and performative assertions enacted in specific situations within fields of power, history and culture” (Kondo, 1990, p304). This reflects changes in the way that anthropology is considering the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘culture’ – in particular, a move towards analytical frameworks of how ‘selves’ emerge through interaction with ‘culture’ – through invention, negotiation (and opposition).

Gavin Flood (2006, p6) also underscores the idea that “bodies” are produced in this way: apropos the “tantric body”: “…the tantric body is not a given that is discovered but a process that is constructed through dedicated effort over years of practice. … Any distinctions between knowing and acting, mind and body, are disrupted by the tantric body in the sense that what might be called imagination becomes a kind of action in tantric ritual and the forms that the body takes in ritual are a kind of knowing. … This corporeal understanding shows itself in the great emphasis on transformative practices in the tantric traditions, ritual inseperable from vision, the body becoming alive with the universe within it, and vibrant with futurity in the anticipation of the goal of the tantric paths.”

Zarilli then highlights another useful point – (quoting Calvin O. Shrag), that “the experienced body is not an object for the abstractive gaze, it is the body as lived, as lodged in the world as a base of operations from which attitudes are assumed and projects deployed.” Here, he is highlighting the difference between our experience of our bodies and how we represent that experience – that there is “a constant process of negotiation” between how we experience our bodies – the discursive formations that we draw upon to make that representation meaningful – and how we think about and express that experience.

An example of these processes would be the chakra schemas associated with tantra practice – and now familiar through countless occult and new age books. In India, there are dozens of different chakra schemas, which for me, indicates that they are (to an extent) metaphoric arrangements for structuring and directing bodily experience – sensations and feelings. As these schemas have been transferred to the west however, due to a variety of historical processes, they have become reified – so that one particular schema – the seven-chakra schema – has become dominant, and is widely thought to have (and thereby experienced as having) a seperate ontological status and to operate in a quasi-medical fashion.

Zarilli goes on to stress what may seem like an obvious point – that individual experience and collective identity operate dialectically – “which is the arena through which ‘the self’ in forged in practice.” Again, calling attention to the way that ‘self’ (also ‘bodies’, ‘agency’, etc.) is negotiated within different social and institutional contexts. He also stresses that: “Modes of extra-daily cultural practice … are not practices reducible to their obvious set of virtuosic body-techniques; rather, modes of cultural practice exist as a set of potentialities of self, power and agency inherent in the complex set of practices, discourses and representations through which a practitioner’s experience of practices is historically and contextually negotiated. Through entrainment and embodiment, complex, extra-daily cultural practices and performances ‘structure the structure’ of experience and meaning – a structure which is never static, but is always in a process of negotiation….

I think there are several useful things to bear in mind here – just as ‘body’, ‘self’, ‘agency’ are provisional, then so are ‘practices’ – that is, they are not “objects” that can be easily removed from one cultural context to another without being changed (sometimes drastically) in the process. We don’t just perform practices passively – do perform a practice is to be changed by it, and equally, performance modifies the practice. Nikki Bardo (2010) makes a similar point regarding entrainment and embodiment. In an essay discussing Wiccan training, she distinguishes between a “natural body” – which progressively becomes (via somatic practices) a “body-in-practice” – “the learner first discovers [then] creates meaning through bodily engagement, through sensual and participatory conversation and intimate interaction.” She writes of students moving from “disembodied” belief to embodied ritual action, and highlights the importance of learning to pay a particular kind of attention to one’s body. Bado does not explain exactly what she means by the phrase “natural body” – it is reminiscient, though, of some of Foucault’s writing about the “docile” body, or the body-as-object. What’s useful here, I think is her reflection on moving from a position which is largely cognitive and passive, to the activity of putting that learning into practice by practice – cultivating particular modalities of body-knowing and acting.

I’ll hold it there for now, and in the next post, discuss some overall themes of tantra practice.

Sources Nikki Bado, Performing the Ancient Ones: The Body-in-practice as the ground of ritualised negotiation in Ute Hüsken, Frank Neubert (eds) Negotiating Rites (Oxford University Press, 2012) Paul Connerton How Societies Remember (Cambridge University Press, 1989) Thomas Csordas Embodiment and experience: the existential ground of culture and self (Cambridge University Press, 1994) Gavin Flood The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion (I.B. Tauris, 2006) Dorrine K Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (University of Chicago, 1990) Zarrilli, Phillip B., When the Body Becomes All Eyes; Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, A South Indian Martial Art (Oxford University Press, 1998)