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Guru Mayi chidvilasananda

Gurumayi Chidvilasananda (or Gurumayi or Swami Chidvilasananda), born Malti Shetty on 24 June 1955, is the guru or spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga path, with ashrams in India at Ganeshpuri and the Western world, with the headquarters of the SYDA foundation in South Fallsburg, New York.

Gurumayi received spiritual initiation (shaktipat) from her guru, Swami Muktananda, when she was 14, at which time he designated her and her brother Swami Nityananda as his successors. She became a renunciate (sanyassin) in 1982. Muktananda died later that year and she and her brother jointly became the heads of Siddha Yoga. They proceeded to expand the South Fallsburg ashram to accommodate large numbers of devotees. In 1985 Nityananda left the Siddha Yoga path.

Gurumayi made Siddha Yoga the Siddha Yoga teachings widely available in the United States and throughout the world. After several decades of traveling to meet people in their countries of origin, the teaching modality changed from large in-person gatherings of devotees to global dissemination of the Siddha Yoga Teachings via live streaming on the Siddha Yoga Path Website and in Siddha Yoga Meditation Ashrams and Centers. Shree Muktananda Ashram in South Fallsburg, NY was reduced, and Gurudev Siddha Perth in Ganeshpuri, India, became a more traditional Gurukula with students in residence, retreats allowing day visitors to the Nityananda Temple and Baba’s Samadhi Shrine.

Gurumayi has written several books starting with the 1989 Kindle My Heart.

Gurumayi Chidvilasananda was born near Mangalore, India on 24 June 1955. She was called Malti as a child and was the eldest of three children to a Mumbai couple who were devotees of Muktananda in the 1950s. Her parents took her to the Gurudev Siddha Peeth ashram at Ganeshpuri for the first time when she was five years old. During her childhood, her parents brought her, her sister, and two brothers to the ashram on weekends.

She received spiritual initiation (shaktipat) from Muktananda at age fourteen and moved to the ashram as a formal disciple and yoga student. At age twenty, Swami Muktananda made her his official English language translator and she accompanied him on his second and third world tours.

On 3 May 1982, Gurumayi was initiated as a sannyasin into the Saraswati order of monks, taking vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience, and acquiring the title and monastic name of Swami Chidvilasananda, (and later, Gurumayi; the two names being Sanskrit for "immersed in the Guru" and "bliss of the play of consciousness"). At this time Swami Muktananda formally designated her as one of his successors, along with her younger brother Subhash Shetty, whose monastic name was Swami Nityananda.

Swami Muktananda died in October 1982, after which Gurumayi and Nityananda became joint spiritual heads of the Siddha Yoga path. Nityananda left the Siddha Yoga path in 1985; according to his 1986 interview in Hinduism Today, he left by his own choice, admitting to having sex with several devotees, deciding to cease to be a Siddha Yoga sannyasi but wishing his sister well as sole guru. A different version of the events was reported later, that there had been a battle for succession, in which Gurumayi "denounced and deposed" her brother "for allegedly participating in antinomian sexual rituals". Swami Chidvilasananda stated that she punished him for his misconduct by letting the women he slept with hit him with a stick; eye-witnesses reported that he was bruised.

Purity[clarification needed] is emphasized in the Siddha Yoga tradition. Pechilis writes that Gurumayi's purity is highlighted to show that she continues the guru tradition, and that she is a suitably pure person to be the spiritual leader of the organization. Pechilis comments that while purity may have been an implicit credential for her predecessor gurus, one point of view is that it became "explicit and greatly emphasized during the succession dispute and is now a primary lens" for understanding Gurumayi's spiritual path. Unusually for female gurus, Pechilis writes, she was not apparently expected to marry at any time. Instead she took sannyasa in the way a male guru would.

The scholars Jeffrey Kripal and Sarah Caldwell write that the 1997 book Meditation Revolution, which includes five recognized scholars among its six authors, essentially legitimizes, systematizes, and canonizes Gurumayi Chidvilasanda's Siddha Yoga lineage. They state that this would be unexceptionable if presented as from devotees, but is problematic given their presentation of themselves as scholarly historians of religion.

Courtesy-wikipedia
- Guru Mayi chidvilasananda

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