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businessmen, whose large donations were a major source of support of the
Ashrams, faired little better. They seldom received a personal audience or favorable
seating at Darshan, the evening public time of question and answers with the guru.
In contrast with the relatively easy public availability, mischievous play, provocative
humor and worldly sophistication of Baba, the ambience of Gurumayi is more
private, simple, serious and subtle. It is as powerful, but in another way.
In response to Gurumayi’s ascension to Siddha Yoga’s singular guru, |
imagined hearing Baba saying that God energy was at least androgynous, if the
dimension of sexual identity was relevant at all. Baba taught that divine energy, by
necessity, is expressed through a wide variety of particular personalities and
cultures and should not be confused with the details of its manifestations. This
included the sexual identity of the chosen Vehicle. Guramayi’s central theme, as |
understand it, concerns the simple, quiet and pervasive powers of love and faith.
Some say Baba took the path, marga, of selfless action, karma-marga, whereas
Gurumayi took the bhakti-marga, the road of loving devotion and faith. The third
marga is jnana-marga, my inclination, is the road of intellectual study and
knowledge. Aldous Huxley related the choice among these three categories of yoga
practice, to the physical and personality types of William Sheldon’s 1954 Atlas of
Man. Karma yoga corresponded to the mesomorphic body type and the assertive
boldness, high energy, and interpersonal callousness of the somatotonic
personality. Bhakti Yoga was the characteristic choice of endomorphic body types
with the vwiscerotonic personality traits of sociability, good will, tolerance and love.
Huxley associated Jnana Yoga with ectomorphic body type and the cerebrotonic
characteristic of shyness, sensitivity and intellectuality.
My summers with Baba at his temporary Ashram in Venice, California and
the permanent American Ashram in South Fallsburg, New York, were spent in daily,
very early morning, chanting of the gurugita after most of the night spent taking
down, cleaning and putting up large tarpaulin meeting tents. | was assigned this
simple, arduously manual, all night work after being interviewed and found out to be
a professor and chairperson of a medical school department. Baba instructed his
assignment committee that many if not all professorial egos would benefit from what
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