Yogi Bhajan

Der Sodarshan Chakra Kriya Kurs für Anfänger

2019-03-122019-12-19 by Amar, posted in deutsch, instructions, meditation course, practice, Sodarshan Chakra Kriya, spirituality

Der große Vorteil von dieser Meditation im Gegensatz zu anderen spirituellen Disziplinen ist, dass
* alle Informationen auf einer Seite zu finden sind, (also im Gegensatz zu den meisten esoterischen Richtungen nichts elitär zurückgehalten wird).
* Alles umsonst ist, (also dass man sich die Wertschätzung dafür nicht leicht erkaufen kann, sondern erarbeiten muss),
* dass diese Yoga-Übung ungefähr 10 mal so stark wie herkömmliche Meditationen ist, und damit durch einen geringen Zeitaufwand schon Erfolge sichtbar werden.

Wer diese Übung einmal gelernt hat dem kann sie nie wieder weg genommen werden, denn selbst wenn man Alles verloren hat (wie z.Bsp. im Gefängnis oder auf einer einsamen Insel gestrandet), kann man sein Leben lang damit weiter fortschreiten!

Wenn Du Jemand kennst, der nie meditiert hat und sogar zögert es zu probieren, dann ist meine Empfehlung die Person ganz langsam auf das Meditieren einzustimmen.

Eine erste Empfehlung wäre
* Im ersten Monat Die Gedanken einfach zu beobachten
(nur eine Minute wöchentlich oder so oft die Person es schafft)
* Im zweiten Monat könnte man dann den Atem für zwei Minuten lang beobachten
(entweder wöchentlich oder täglich)
* Und im dritten Monat dann für 3 Minuten täglich
wiederholt von 1 – 16 zählen (weil SCK 16 Wiederholungen hat)

Der langsame Fortschritt ist dazu gedacht,
Menschen nicht zu vergraulen, die gerade mal ihren Fuß in die Türe der Spiritualität setzen,
Und die Modifikationen sind gut gegen die Langeweile der Wiederholung,
wenn man anfangs noch keine Veränderungen wahrnimmt.

Dann, ohne die Zeit weiter zu erhöhen,
bringe dem Schüler die Haltung von SCK bei,
eine Woche später dann das linke-rechte Nasenloch-Atmen,
und noch eine Woche später, wie man den Bauch dazu pumpt
(ein mal mehr bei jeder Sitzung, bis die 16 x 3 Bauchbewegungen erreicht sind.

Auf diese Art wächst man langsam in SCK rein und kann ab dann diesen Anfängerkurs hier machen.

Der Hauptgrund Sodarshan Chakra Kriya im Gegenteil zu anderen spirituellen Disziplinen zu machen ist der Glaube, dass Deine interne Unausgeglichenheiten und Fehlkonzeptionen die Wurzel all Deiner Probleme sind.
SCK reinigt Deine Persönlichkeit von den Aspekten, die Dir den Zugang zu Deiner wahren Seele überschatten.
Um Dir den Wert regelmässigen Praktizierens vor Augen zu halten:
Lese in meiner bio>karmic disappointments, was für ein Leid man durchlaufen muss, wenn man nicht täglich meditiert.

Aber genau das macht es sehr schwer, diese Übung konsequent durchzuziehen, denn das zurückgebliebene Selbstbildnis (wie es Morpheus in der Matrix beschreibt) macht von allen Tricks des Intellekts gebrauch, um nicht vom Ego los zu lassen.

Ambition, sowohl als Aspiration benötigt eine Kombination von zwei Arten der Stärke oder Tugend:
Ein langzeit Durchhaltevermögen und der Wille unangenehme Phasen zu durchstehen.
Je nach dem eigenen Weltbild und den Erfahrungen kann man sich entweder eine langen aber sicheren Weg aussuchen (der 28 Jahre des Glaubens benötigt), oder einen kurzen aber schmerzhaften auswählen, in dem man schnell durch den Prozess durchdringt.
Die Wahl ist ähnlich der, ob man ein Pflaster langsam abzieht, oder sich es schnell vom Körper reisst.

Hiermit versuche ich beiden Wegen gerecht zu werden.
Sollte Deine Aspiration sein, SCK komplett zu meistern ohne halbwegs aufzugeben, tust Du gut daran nicht, wie ich, zwei Jahrzehntelang rum zu schwimmen, um immer mal wieder die vollen 2,5 Stunden erzwingen zu wollen, bis die tiefen Krisen unangenehmer Selbsterkenntnis mich aufgeben ließen – nur um später erneut ganz von vorne anfangen zu müssen.

Aus meinen Fehler lernend, entwickelte ich eine Methode meinen verschluderten Langzeitplan innerhalb von 5 Jahren aufzuholen, den Du als Geländer verwenden kannst, um es nicht zu übertreiben, oder vorschnell aufzuhören.

1.) Sodarshan Chakra Kriya lernen

Fange mit einer kurzen körperlichen Übung an:
– Gehe zu dieser Seite: https://thilo.bandcamp.com/album/sodarshan-chakra-kriya
– spiele die Beats von vorne ab (Du kannst das online machen ohne etwas kaufen zu müssen),
– wenn immer der Wind Klang kommt, atme,
– dann halte Deinen Atem
– und pumpe den Bauch zu diesen Schlägen, bis der nächste Atemklang kommt.
– fahre fort, bis Deine Bauchmuskeln erschöpft sind und schreibe dann die Nummer des Stücks auf, an dem Du aufgehört hast.
In den nächsten Tagen:
– Da die Schläge sich verlangsamen, fahre mit dem Stück fort, bei dem Du das letzte mal aufgehört hast, bis Du das Stück findes, das langsam genug ist, dass Du den Bauch dazu pumpen kannst.

Solltest Du lieber im Stillen praktizieren, habe ich hier eine ausführliche Anleitung und eine Zählhilfe mit Fingern anstatt Klängen geschrieben.

Für jeden Schritt beglaubigst Du Dich selbst mit einer Tarot-Karte. Wenn Du willst, kannst Du Dir Tarotkarten kaufen, um ein materielles Gefühl des Fortschritts zu erleben.

2.) Als nächstes gilt es die original Anleitung auszuführen während Du weiterhin den Bauch zu den oben erwähnten Schlägen pumpst.
Benutze den folgenden fett-gedruckten Absatz als Spickzettel, bis Du die Übung auswendig kannst.

MUDRA UND ATEM:
a) Blockiere den rechten Nasenflügel mit dem rechten Daumen. Atme langsam und tief durch den linken Nasenflügel ein und halte den Atem.
Chante im Geiste 16 mal ‘Wahe Guru”, und pumpe dazu den Nabel 3 mal mit jeder Repetition ( einmal bei “Waa”, einmal bei “Heh” und einmal bei “Guru”; insgesamt 48 Bauch-Anspannungen.

b)
Löse den Finger vom rechten Nasenflügel und benutze den rechten Zeige- oder kleinen Finger, um das linke Nasenloch zu schließen. Atme langsam und tief durch das rechte Nasenloch aus. Setze die Übung genauso fort links einzuatmen und rechts auszuatmen.

Sobald Du es geschafft hast 7 dieser Atemzyklen hintereinander durch zu ziehen bist Du aus Deinem Null-Wissen herausgewachsen und hast Dir die Karte 0 verdient.
Gratuliere – Du kannst jetzt Sodarshan Chakra Kriya machen!

BEENDEN: Inhaliere und halte die Luft für 5-10 Sekunden an. Ausatmen.
Dann strecke und schüttle den Körper ungefähr eine Minute lang, um die Energie zu zirkulieren.

2.) in die tägliche Praxis hineinwachsen

[Original Anleitung:] POSITION: Sitze mit einem geraden Rücken (entweder mit gekreuzten Beinen oder in einem Stuhl mit den Füßen flach auf dem Boden)
Augen sind auf die Nasenspitze fokussiert, oder geschlossen, falls Dir das lieber ist.
Yogi Bhajan

Schritt 3:
Beschaffe Dir einen Timer oder eine Eieruhr und mache ein mal wöchentlich 3 Minuten SCK.
Für jede der folgenden 3 Monate erhältst Du eine der 3 Karten des Magiers:

Innerhalb des nächsten Monats kannst Du Dir die zweite TarotKarte, Die Hohepriesterin, ergattern, indem Du zweimal wöchentlich praktizierst.

(Eins ist eine männliche Nummer, weshalb der Magier die Karte Eins war und die Hohepriesterin die weibliche Nummer zwei hat.)

Anfänger mögen einen Monat für jeden dieser Schritte brauchen,
und Fortgeschrittene können täglich zur nächsten Übung weiter gehen.

Tipp :
Falls Du Dich in einer schwierignen Situation befindest (weil Du z.Bsp. irgendwo zu Gast bist), von Leuten umgeben bist, und keine Eieruhr hast, dann kannst Du Deine tägliche Praxis 7 Atemzyklen lang diskret auf einem Toilettendeckel durchführen, denn das sind ungefähr 3 Minuten.
Niemand wird Deine Abwesenheit über solch eine kurze Zeit bemerken.

{Original Kommentar von Y.B.:}

Die Tragödie des Lebens ist, wenn das Unterbewusstsein Abfälle in das Bewusstsein entlädt. Dieses Kriya erweckt die Kundalini um Dir die notwendige Vitalität und Intuition zu geben, um die negativen Nebenwirkungen des Unterbewusstseins zu bekämpfen.

Faustregel: Fahre erst mit einer nächsten Übung fort, wenn Du Dir sicher bist, diese ohne Schwierigkeiten durchgeführt zu haben. Wenn nicht, dann wiederhole die Übung, bis Du zufrieden damit bist.

Jetzt mache SCk drei mal wöchentlich (das ist der letzte Schritt in dem Du es an fixen Wochentagen machen kannst).
Danach kriegst Du die Karte
Then try to do SCK three times weekly (this is the last step in which you can set fixed weekdays for your practice).
You then may claim Die Herrscherin

Meditation für Fokus und geistige Reinigung
{Original Kommentar von Y.B. :}

Hier ist eine Meditation, die mit Hilfe von Prana geistigen Müll aufräumt, und Klarheit schafft.

Von allen 20 Arten Yoga, einschliesslich Kundalini Yoga, ist das das höchste Kriya.

Dies ist eine sehr wirksame Meditation, um Reichtum zu erlangen.

Sie wird Dir einen Neustart verschaffen.

Sobald Du SCK 4x wöchentlich machen kannst, bekommst Du die Karte Der Herrscher.

{Original Kommentar von Y.B. :}

Es ist das einfachste Kriya, aber gleichzeitig eines der schwersten.

Diese Übung schneidet durch alle Barrieren der psychotischen oder neurotischen Natur.

Wenn sich eine Person in einem sehr schlechten Zustand befindet, werden extern angewandte Methoden nicht funktionieren.

Der Druck muss von innen stimuliert werden.

Bist Du bereit SCK 5x wöchentlich zu machen, gehört die Karte Der HierophantDir.

{Original Kommentar von Y.B. :}

Es gibt keine Zeit, keinen Platz, keinen Raum und keine Bedingung die mit dieser Meditation verknüpft sind.

Jeder Müllhaufen benötigt seine eigene Zeit um gereinigt zu werden.

Wenn Du Deinen eigenen Müll angehst, musst Du selbst schätzen; und ihn dann so schnell als Du kannst oder langsam, wie Du willst verarbeiten.

Du musst entscheiden wie viel Zeit Du hast, um Deine eigene Müllhalde zu verarbeiten.

Sobald Du in der Lage bist SCK 6x wöchentlich zu praktizieren, (also jeden Werktag außer Sonntag z.Bsp.), hast Du Dir Die Liebenden verdient.

Wenn Du Fragen hast, oder mehr über SCK wissen willst, lese bitte die deutschen Artikel oder surfe querfeldein auf dieser Seite, denn hier steht Alles, was es über SCK zu wissen gibt.

Jetzt solltest Du es schaffen SCK (nur 3 Minuten lang) täglich zu machen und bekommst dafür die Karte: Der Wagen.

Nur um Dich zu inspirieren, dass das möglich ist:
Obwohl ich aus einer unspirituellen nicht-meditierenden Familie stamme habe ich alle Schritte dieses folgenden Kurses selbst gemacht.

Also wenn ich das tun konnte, dann kannst Du das auch – so lange Du Dich danach sehnst Deine Unausgeglichenheiten und Irrmeinungen ausbalancieren zu wollen.

Sobald Du SCK täglich machen kannst bist Du auf dem langsamen aber sichern Pfad, auf den Du jederzeit zurückfallen kannst, wenn immer Deine Praxis versagen sollte.

Der Vorteil dieses Weges ist, dass er Deine Seele reibungslos im Hintergrund reinigt, so dass Nichts Deinen weltlichen Ambitionen im Weg steht.

Um Dir also Dein persönliches Sicherheitsnetz zu schaffen:
1.) Schreibe auf, wann Du SCK angefangen hast
(Ich benutze ein Spreadsheet, um meine gewünschten und wirklich durchgeführten Meditationszeiten einzutragen).
2.) Faustregel, wenn immer Du eine längere Pause hattest:
Ab dem Zeitpunkt, an dem Du angefangen hast, solltest Du in der Lage sein Deine Meditationszeit jedes Jahr um 6 Minuten gesteigert zu haben (oder alle 2 Monate um einen Monat).
{Bsp: Nach 5 Jahren solltest Du fähig sein täglich eine halbe Stunde lang zu meditieren}

Um die Meditation bis auf ein Zehntel des Tages aufzubauen, was dem christlichen Zehnt einer Spende entspricht und bei Sikhs Dasvand heisst, braucht man auf diese Art 24-25 Jahre, und dann noch 3 Jahre um 1000 Tage 2.5 Stunden zu machen.

Dieser 28-Jahre-Zyklus entspricht einer Saturn-Wiederkehr, nach der Einem karmische Lektionen vor Augen gehalten werden, denn der Saturn ist der äußerste Planet in unserem Sonnensystem, der damit die Grenzen aufzeigt.

Das scheint eine sehr lange Zeit zu sein, aber wenn man an größere Seelenzyklen (wie z.Bsp. Reinkarnation) glaubt, dann sind 28 Jahre ein winziger Tropfen auf den heissen Stein – erst Recht verglichen mit den Äonen
* des derzeitigen Maya Zeitalters, was 5128 Jahre lang andauern soll,
* unserem Wassermannzeitalter im Zusammenhang des 25000 Jahre Zyklus des platonischen Erdenjahrs, oder dem
* 432000 Jahre andauernden derzeitigen Kali Yuga der indischen Weltalter, was insgesamt 4 Millionen und 320 tausend Jahre andauert!

Alles, was Du tun musst, um das “Äon” bzw die Karte Die Gerechtigkeit für Dich vereinnahmen, ist ein Meditationstagebuch anzufangen in dem Du Deine Meditationszeiten und eventuelle Erkenntnisse danach aufschreibst.

3.) Wenn immer Du diesem Plan hinterher hinkst, gebe nicht auf, denn Du kannst Deine verpasste Meditationszeit in der bald kommenden mittleren Stufe aufholen.
Auf diese Art habe ich es geschafft sogar nach 20 Jahren wieder auf den Wagen aufzuspringen!
Außerdem kannst Du das System auch benutzen, um alle Arten von unbeliebten Tätigkeiten langsam in Dein Leben zu implementieren.

Um etwas zurückzugeben:
Teile Deine Erfahrungen in den Kommentaren,
damit Andere von Dir und Du von Anderen lernen kannst.

Wenn Du so weit bist weiter zu gehen, kontaktiere mich hier,
und ich werde die Schritte der Mittelstufe sofort hier veröffentlichen.

The beginner’s Sodarshan Chakra Kriya course

2019-03-122019-12-19 by Amar, posted in instructions, meditation course, practice, Sodarshan Chakra Kriya, spirituality, yoga

The advantage of this meditation in opposition to other spiritual disciplines is that
* the entire information can be found on one single page, meaning that in opposition to most esoteric directions, nothing is held back;
* everything is free, meaning that you can’t easily put a value-tag on this method by buying your way into it, but have to earn the respect for it by working for it.
* and since this Yoga-exercise is about 10 times stronger than common meditations, it will yield results within short times of daily practice already.

No one can take this Kriya (exercise) ever away again from someone who did learn it, because even in most adverse circumstances, when you lost everything (such as in prison or being stranded on an island for example) you can continue to evolve on this path for life!

If you know someone who never did meditate at all and even is hesitant to try,
my recommendation is to tune them in very very slowly

by first advising them to simply
* observe thoughts coming and going
for just one minute weekly (or as often as they can)

a month later
* to observe the breath for 2 minutes daily (or as often as they can)

and in the third month for 3 minutes daily
* to count from 1 to 16 repeatedly (because SCK has 16 repetitions)

The slow progress isgood not to antagonise people before they did set a foot into the door of spirituality,
and and the modifications are to avoid the boredom of repetition without significant results.

Then without increasing the time beyond 3 minutes,
* tell them the posture of SCK,
* a week later the left & right nostril breathing
* and one more week later to pump the belly 3 times more each time,
until they accomplished 16 x 3 pumps.

This way they will have slowly grown into the preparations for SCK within a few months,
and can continue with this beginner’s course as described below.

The main reason for doing Sodarshan Chakra Kriya in opposition to other spiritual disciplines is the belief that your internal imbalances and misconceptions are the root of all your problems.
SCK does mentally cleanse your personality from the aspects which cloud your true soul.
In order to see the value of a regular practice, read my bio>karmic disappointments to see how long lasting life’s frustrations can be if you don’t meditate on a daily basis.

But that exactly makes it very difficult to pursue, because ones residual self image (as Morpheus calls it in the Matrix) does use every trick available to the mind, not to let go of the ego.

Ambition as well as aspiration needs a combination of two strengths or virtues:
Long term persistence, and the willingness to overcome unpleasant phases.
Depending on someones worldview and experiences one can either subscribe to a safe but slow path (which requires 28 years of faith),
or a short, but painful one of quickly punching through the process.
The choice is similar to choosing whether you pull of a plaster slowly or rip it of quickly.

I herewith try to accommodate people of both kinds. Should your aspiration be to fully master SCK without giving up half way, you do well not floating around like me for two decades and every once in a while try again to force 2.5 hours into my life until the profound crises of unpleasant self-realisations made me give it up – only to later start from scratch again.

1.) learning Sodarshan Chakra Kriya

Start with short, light physical exercises:
– Go to this site: https://thilo.bandcamp.com/album/sodarshan-chakra-kriya
– play the track (no need to buy anything, just use them online),
– whenever you hear the wind sound, breath in,
– then hold your breath
– and pump the belly to those beats until the next breathing sound occurs.
– continue this until your belly-muscles are exhausted and write down which track you stopped.
Next day(s):
– Because the beats are gradually slowing down, continue with the track where you left of, until you find the track which is slow enough for you to pump your belly along with them.

Should you prefer to practice in silence, I did wrote an instruction for you here, which helps you count with fingers instead of Rythms.

On each step you self-certify yourself with a Tarot-card. If you want you may buy yourself a deck so that you get a sense of a physical accomplishment.

2.) Next:
Incorporate the original instructions whilst pumping your belly to the beats:
Use the following bold paragraph as a cheat-sheet (copy & print) until you know it by heart.

MUDRA AND BREATH: a) Block off the right nostril with the right thumb. Inhale slowly and deeply through the left nostril and hold the breath.
Mentally chant ‘Wahe Guru” 16 times, while pumping the navel point 3 times with each repetition (once on ”Waa”, once on ”hey”, and once on ”Guru”) for a total of 48 pumps.

b) Unblock the right nostril and use the right index or pinkie finger to block the left nostril. Exhale slowly and deeply through the right nostril. Continue, inhaling left nostril, exhaling right.

TO END: Inhale and hold 5-10 seconds. Exhale.
Then stretch and shake the body for about 1 minute to circulate the energy.

As soon as you manage to do 7 of those breathing cycles in a row, you moved out of ground zero, and therewith can claim the card #0
Congratulations,
You now are able to do Sodarshan Chakra Kriya!

Many of you will be content to practice 1-3 times per week, which is good to do for quite a while.

And at a later point, one day,
when you read in my bio the still ongoing series about “karmic dissapointments”
you may understand why a daily practice can spare you
many decades of the pains of ignorance & worldly trial and errors.

For those people are the next steps about

2.) growing into a daily practice

[Original instruction:] POSITION: Sit with a straight spine
(either with legs crossed or sitting on a chair with feet flat on the ground)
Eyes are focused at the tip of the nose, or closed if you prefer.
Yogi Bhajan

Step 3:
Get yourself a timer and do once weekly 3 minutes of SCK .
Each of the following 3 months you can claim one of those 3 cards of the magician:

Within the next month you may claim the second card The High Priestess, by practicing twice weekly.

(One is the male number, hence the magician was male, and two is the female number hence it is about the priestess.)

Beginners may take a month for each of those steps,
and intermediate practitioners can do one after another day by day.

Tip :
If you encounter difficult circumstances (because you are a guest somewhere for example), are surrounded by people and have no timer at hand, just do it discreetly on a toilet lid for 7 breathing cycles.
That makes approximately 3 minutes and nobody will notice your absence for such a short time.

{Original comment from Y.B.:}

The tragedy of life is when the subconscious releases garbage into the conscious mind.

This kriya invokes the Kundalini to give you the necessary vitality and intuition to combat the negative effects of the subconscious mind.

In general: only move on to next steps if you are certain that you are up to it. If you are not sure, just repeat an exercise until you feel ready to move on.

Then try to do SCK three times weekly (this is the last step in which you can set fixed weekdays for your practice).
You then may claim the card Empress.

Meditation for focus and mental purification
{Original comment from Y.B. :}

Here is a meditation that makes use of prana to cleanse mental garbage and purify the mind.

Of all the 20 types of yoga, including Kundalini yoga, this is the highest kriya.

This is a very powerful meditation for prosperity.
It will give you a new start.

Once you are able to do SCK 4x weekly, you may claim the Emperor

{Original comment from Y.B. :}

It is the simplest kriya, but at the same time the hardest.

It cuts through all darkness and all barriers of the neurotic or psychotic nature.

When a person is in a very bad state, techniques imposed form the outside will not work. The pressure has to be stimulated from within.

Once you are capable to do SCK 5x weekly, The Hierophant is your card.

{Original comment from Y.B. :}

There is no time, no place, no space, and no condition attached to this meditation.

Each garbage pit has its own time to clear.

If you are going to clean your own garbage, you must estimate and clean it as fast as you can, or as slow as you want.

You have to decide how much time you have to dean up your garbage pit.

If you do SCK 6x weekly, you still can take Sundays of and still claim the card Lovers

If you want to know more about SCK or have questions, please read the archive of SCK articles including practical instructions on how to keep count or about the theory behind it here.

Now you should be able to practice SCK (for just 3 minutes) daily and therewith can claim The Chariot

Just to inspire you to know that this is possible: Even though I do come from an unspiritual and non-meditating family, I want to point out that I personally did all steps I am propagating above (but it took me long until I succeded).

So if I was able to do it, you know that you can do it too – as long as you long enough for clearing your imbalances and misconceptions.

Once you are able to do SCK daily, you are on the slow and save path which you are always able to fall back onto, whenever your practice fails.

Advantage of this path is that it cleanses your soul smoothly, working in the background, so it does not interfere with your worldly ambitions.

To create your personal safety-net:
1.) Write down when you did start doing SCK
(I use a spreadsheet to list my required vs the completed meditation times).
2.) Easy rule of thumb for when you dropped it for a while:
Since the time you started, your meditation-time should have increased by 6 minutes yearly or one minute more every two months .
{example: after 5 years you should be able to do half an hour of meditation daily.)

This pace will take you 24-25 years to build it up to the Dasvand of a tenth of a day, and an another 3 years to do the 1000 days of 2.5 hours – a 28 year cycle of a Saturn return after which your karmic lesson of life will be revealed to you.
(Saturn is the outermost planet of our solar system and it takes 28 years for it to surround our sun. Hence it shows us our outermost limits and duties.)

This may seem very long, but if you believe in a larger cycle of your soul (such as reincarnation for example), a 28 year cleansing is a mere drop against the ocean of aeons, such as
* our current Mayan calendar cycle, which lasts until the year 4772,
* the 25,000 year cycles of the astrological ages,
* or the 432,000 year Indian Yuga Cycle we are currently in (which comprises 4,320,000 years altogether!)

All you have to do to claim the Aeon or the card
the Judgement, is for you to start a meditation diary with the times you did meditate and possible insights you had afterwards.

3.) If you ever fell behind this plan, don’t throw it away, but use the intermediate course to catch up to the point where you should be.
This way I even did manage to jump back on the waggon after having failed to practice regularly for 20 years !
Apart from that you may use this system to implement all kinds of other unpleasant activities into your life.

To give something back:
Share your experiences in the comments,
so that others can learn from you and you can learn from others.

When you are ready to move on, notify me here,
and I will post the intermediate steps for you.

Thoughts on 3HO

2019-02-212019-03-17 by Amar, posted in Sodarshan Chakra Kriya

How Sodarshan Chakra Kriya does stir up all the emotions

A blue big aura is about Jupiter, which is one of the spiritual principles, which pervade all areas of life.

Jupiter is related to:

the index finger,
the color blue,
the throat chakra,
spirituality,
and qualities like expansion of the body, career or aura.

All in all it can be compared to the spiritual aspect of the wood element in traditional Chinese Medicine, which is called HUN.

And the left nostril, which is covered in the exercise today relates to the moon side of the person – the emotional side.
So connecting the index finger to the left nostril does bring spiritual awareness into your emotions. And that is how it does clean your emotional garbage.

My conclusions on 3HO

Yogi Bhajan certainly had Jupiter qualities, because at his peak he was big, very spiritual and also insatiable when building his Yogi-tea empire.
I hope that you can see that in the following critical paragraphs my intention is neither to advertise my own spiritual direction as “the next bliss”, nor to degrade Yogi Bhajan, but to be as honest as possible about all the good and the bad, including my own weaknesses and issues.

The reasons that he must have thought that his ends did justify the means is the reason why I am so frustrated with Yogi Bhajan and 3HO: He never payed any of the herbs we prepared for him, some teachers seem to have skipped taxes on their cash-income from lectures, and being an idealistic youngster, I was the ideal person to be exploited for free work (just it happens in cult-like organisations).

Just as Jesus said: “you will know them by their fruits”, this also did spread to his followers: I told 3HO members that I wanted to move to the USA, and would do any job for them.
One sucked $2000 out of me by selling me 3 times his newest version of the same Kabbalah course and making him do advanced web-design for less than the minimum wage whilst living in the most expensive area of Manhattan.
And another one, whom I did help to build up his website (for free in the hope for him to arrange me a job in LA), deliberately kept me at arms length in Europe only to post in his blog that “people who did loose their center are bad for completion, but useful troubleshooters” (a synonym for ‘useful idiots’).

If he was the all-intuitive Yogi whom 3HO makes him out to be, he surely should have sensed how fragile my young spiritual seed was and should have warned me.

To understand my grudge-holding oversensitivity, (and to give you now the warning I never had), I have to explain to you the disastrous consequences his false premises of a “highest” Kriya which “cuts through all darkness”, “gives one a new start” and “the nine precious virtues and 18 occult powers” had on me.

I was told by blog readers that there are two more Kriyas he promoted as the ultimate ones, such as Kirtan Kriya, which would “make you see the unseen”, and Sat Kriya which would be “the one Kriya he would teach if he only could teach one Kriya”.
This did water down thise promise of SCK being “the highest Kriya”, just as you might find it disappointing when you are told to be someones “one love”,
only to hear that this person also told it to two others.

Yogi Bhajan intended and certainly did very well in selling eastern spirituality to scientific minded Westerners. The only problem is that by omitting that he sold his individual combination of yogic energetic work and his orthodox belief in god, he fooled people like Gurusant Singh into Yoga and me into Sikhism – something we both never were interested to adopt. I am certain he had good intentions, but therewith also did mislead: By dishing out black&white “facts” he made it seem as if he knew “the truth” – a clarity most spiritual seekers long for only to find themselves in an abysmal pit when things didn’t turn out the way they were hoped to be.

The effect is like when a child finds out that Santa Claus never existed, or when a teenager’s dream of a super-hero-miracle, is shattered. This is especially bad when significant effort was put into that dream, as it leads to a literal dis-appointment – a step away from a hopeful appointment ones soul made.

I fully admit me naively having been attracted to Y.B.’s teachings, because he had the same assertive “Gallbladder-energy” (as it is called in TCM) as my father had.
One always attracts Gurus which reflect ones own personal inclings. Since “German discipline” was pushed onto me, his unyielding speeches were the language I was prepared to hear – not realising that a rigid discipline is not the path to open mindedness.
{This btw is why I choose those Tarot cards drawn by Frieda Harris:
She did have the exact same ambivalent relationship to her associate Alister Crowley, as I had to Y.B. – a mixture between fascination and awe and frustration.}

For the next 2 decades I was sincerely dedicated to this Kriya trying and failing to do the 2.5 hours regularly over and over again for 1000-3000 of times (no exaggeration!), all in the hope that this would be the key to overcome all obstacles.

My failures (together with not being able to follow the dietary and circadian Indian 3HO-lifestyle of “cultural imposition“) did lead to a tremendous amount of feelings of insignificance and guilt, and did bring out so much internal trouble in me that it did sabotage literally all worldly aspects of my life – from jobs to all my friend- & relationships and even my physical well being.
All, because I always did consider my failings to have been a result of not having dedicated myself enough to the detachment from worldly desires such as pleasures or my ambitions (which I considered to be an ego-trip).

The only aspect, which in the background sneaked up on me continuously, was me ageing and therewith the decline of my possibilities and joy in life.
Realising the ever increasing loss of opportunities I did spiral downward into an epic depression.

This is what frustrates me so much about most successful organisations:
They never ever will take blame for the huge collateral damages they caused by using tons of expandable foot-soldiers as step-stones on their way.
Such longterm damages are too abstract to be traced back to them being the cause, because the effects are as delayed as the #meToo incubation time is.

However, I am very aware that in the end all the troubles I did encounter were also a result of my own karmic misconceptions of reality, so I mainly write those negative experiences for your educational purposes (to counteract erroneous superstitions) and at the same time for myself to let my past go in order to make love for fresh compassion again.

Whilst I initially did set up this blog to inspire other people to do more SCK, I now put up this slow course in order to protect any of you from trying to force your way onto spirituality, and then fail with nearly suicidal feelings – something I have seen a few times – even here on this blog.

~ ~ ~

Now you may ask why I do even continue to do SCK?
For the same reason couples stay together in times of disharmony,
people keep working in a tough job,
or 3HO holds on to an impeccable image of Yogi Bhajan:
We all did invest too much in our hopes and it would be disastrous to throw it all away.
It took me 2 decades building up this Kriya, and I want to do at least the legendary 1000 days of 1/10th of the day in order to able to say that I have given it the full chance.
It is as much as an experiment for me as “the last straw” I am holding onto, because everything else did fail in life and I still am hoping for that point of spiritual breakthrough. Maybe this breakthrough will only come when hope in it wanes.

But apart from my personal desperation, another reason why I do continue and advertise for this meditation-yoga, is because I do consider this Kriya to be one of the most effective Kriyas to clean Karma, so it is definitely is worth doing it (especially if you believe in reincarnation) and want to minimise your future suffering.
I told you about the terrible problems I had, but I also have to point out that over the years SCK did mature me by the means of profound insights.

My week with Yogi Bhajan

2019-02-102019-03-12 by Amar, posted in meditation course, Sodarshan Chakra Kriya

Coincidentally, just as I was at my peek of doing SCK for 2.5 hours daily, Yogi Bhajan (YB) came over to London and because someone stepped back from putting up some of his 3HO-organisation, I did fill that gap and let two members stay at my apartment.

My young energy was still uncontrolled and very chaotic at the time, so (even with the help of two friends) I had to clean my place for the entire day nonstop until very late at night and I was still very tired when I had to pick up their bodyguards from the airport the next morning.

Because he had a VIP ticket to get through customs earlier, he came out of the gateways ahead of anyone else, and was surrounded by a bunch of white dressed people in turbans. Since in my eyes all souls are of equal value, I was a bit puzzled that a spiritual leader would ensure and allow for having privileges which state that he was more worth than a common man.

Being very tired, I drove back with three of his bodyguards into the center – like in trance, One 3HO member did tell me that life is a stage, so it would be about playing a role, so I took that advice and pretended to have relaxed control about everything, even though I hardly could focus on the traffic.
About half an hour into the ride, one of them did point out to me that we were driving into the wrong direction – instead of back into London, we were already half way towards Brighton!

The next morning, I made a huge German breakfast for my 2 guests (which, to their shock did include not only many kinds of cheese, but I purposely did include also a few kinds of sausages to make a point that not everyone who does yoga is a perfect vegetarian). Just as we were finished, the organisers called and told us that YB had cooked, so even though we just had eaten big-time, they wanted to rush out in order to experience his cooking. From then on I refrained from the “bed and breakfast” service.

At this meal, coincidentally I sat next to YB and when I was about to rush away again to make place for one of their team he did call me back with paternal love, which to me was very flattering at the time. With hindsight I would say that the strong authority he did emanate was probably the secret to his charismatic success in building up a strong follower-ship. To him, coming from the Indian tradition of unconditional surrender to spiritual teachers, he of course took it for granted to receive the same kind of devotion he did give to his merciless teacher.

He had a ring onto which a diamond was elevated by a metal spiral, and when I remarked that this was a great idea, he replied that he had ‘many great ideas’, which as a European seemed like bragging to me – yet to Americans such statements of self-confidence are probably seen as an effective self-promotion.

The good thing is that in the consultation later he told me that at one point his teacher had him do SCK, so I knew that this Kriya is not invented by him and therefore, whenever I felt grumpy towards him, I could separate the teachings from the teacher himself by considering him to be a postman for valuable information. Remember this in case you ever disagree with teachers (or this blog as a matter): Don’t drop your practice or believe in the path only because the delivery-man was not to your liking.

I will tell you now everything he told me, so that you also may benefit from his advice:

Yogi Bhajan’s consultation

When entering YB’s room for a consultation later, he (who was 8 years older than my parents) had such a non-penetrable aura that I did not dare to confront him on his guru-like status and ask him why he did allow (or even further) that his entire bunch did constantly worship him.

Still being embarrassed about my driving disaster, I asked him what to do against the chaos in my life he recommended me to massage my ears under the shower.
{Over the years I found out that, when washing my hands, also washing my ears with cold water is as calming and refreshing as doing it under the shower and it can be done multiple times throughout the day.}

Someone made me tell him, that I currently do 2 1/2 hours of SCK at the time and in a reflex he instantly burst out something, which in my impression was that this was not targeted towards me personally, but to motivate anyone who does SCK:

“If you do SCK for 2,5 hours daily, there is nothing I [meaning any Guru] can teach you anymore.“

Probably because at the time I was studying Chinese Medicine, he also said: “He is a simple student and will become a great healer and a saint.”, which struck me as a a bit of a sales-pitch on his behalf to keep me going. All I can say so far is that I did not become a great healer and am far away from being a saint, but after having read Yogananda’s autobiography of a yogi it dawned upon me that Indians have a very different understanding of saints than Westerners do – more as a person who manifests divine powers, rather than Christians who associate a saint with someone who is ethically perfect and doing benevolent deeds.

It seems to me that flowery exaggeration is a part of the cultural vocabulary of the Indian language, and me, coming from the plain German culture took quite a few things too literal, like when he said to someone else about me: ‘He is a sage. He was born wise!’, or when he described the superhuman powers of Sodarshan Chakra Kriya.
However, such promises do have quite a longterm effect, because since 3 decades I am now hoping to get enlightened by the means of SCK.
Slowly it dawns upon me that enlightenment probably doesn’t come with a big bang but gradually and less spectacular than I did anticipate – similar to the wisdom of old age, only much faster and without the need of physical sufferings.

He must have noticed that I was not the type of getting up early, because without him asking, he also did recommend to me to meditate before sunrise something I at the time despised.
However, I have to admit, that it’s ten-times easier to meditate in the mornings before the yang of the day rises, because this early are not many internal and external thoughts around, which could an empty mindedness.
But since the morning is the worst time for busy workers to do it, I want to reassure you that this also works at any other time in the day, especially since there is “no time and space attached” to SCK.

~~~

He also did say that I would need protection and did recommend Rahke Rakhanar.
At the time and for decades later I did not want any protection, because it insinuates a discrimination against “lesser” or “evil” people, which is the opposite of what I would call unconditional love.

The 3HO dress-code

Y.B. did also recommend me to wear a turban, so I tried it for the week whilst he was there. When doing SCK without wearing a turban my energy did rise to my third eye point between my eyebrows, but when wearing one, it rose to the crown chakra on the top of my head.

I know that YB (in one of the rare occasions when he was lenient and compromising) supposedly did allow for people to wear anything white on the head, but I would add – if you want the full benefits, go for a real tightly wrapped turban, and if this is too much for you just leave it.
I did experiment a lot with wearing other white stuff but never felt anything from it – neither btw from wearing white clothes. Sikhs originally only are required to wear white underwear but not white everywhere, and all-white for me personally does not work and neither suit me. Some people thrive on the role of displaying Sikhism with a turban, but others nearly get beat up for it on the streets.
My rule of thumb is: If you really are a sincere Sikh a turban will strengthen you, but if you can’t relate to religion, then better don’t play this role, because you will end up being attacked for being a hypocrite.

The impressions 3HO left behind their environment.

At times I felt really embarrassed when we (who all where white Westerners, dressed in white and were wearing white turbans) were ordered to go to a gurdwara (the Sikh-church), to take part in their worship – but only to the point in which YB did preach – and afterwards got up instantly in the middle of the ceremony to leave or eat in a special room only for VIP people whilst the crowd was eating in the hall downstairs.
I then usually went to to eat with the community and did ask them about their perception of YB. They deemed him as just another pujari (priest) but not like something equivalent to an archbishop, which his visits with many religious leaders did insinuate.

~~~

On a subtle level I did notice YB on one hand occasionally very subtly smiling about me, when I did follow his recommendation to wear a turban or when I was funny, but interestingly he always instantly stopped to smile, whenever he realised that I did catch him being pleased. I think it was probably a good intention to nip any potentially arising egotism of mine in the bud.

However, just before the end of his stay, because I hit my finger and could hardly wrap a turban, and also because I didn’t want to be someone who just puts on a show for him him, I stopped wearing a turban and all white clothes.
I found it too tedious to wrap it all up only for the meditation session anyway, because I would not have worn it outside.

The tipping point for my faith in 3HO

When I am in admiration of a cause or person I do give everything I can, and so it was with YB and 3HO. I did everything for them, took out all the time for them, and also donated to YB for his consultation, despite the fact that I drove them around for a week and did put them up for free.

Ironically it was actually YB himself, and his huge demands for the 3HO organisation, which made me loose my daily routine of doing 2.5 hours of SCK, because for the time of their stay I was constantly in demand of driving them around.

At one point, in the middle of me still eating, he demanded that we all get up right now and when I continued to enjoy my food he reprehended me by mocking my epicurean humming and told me of harshly, which then was a breaking point for me.
As I did follow him just a few minutes later, he made sure that he had started the public lecture already before I drove down in the car had the chance to arrive.
You may say that this was oversensitive of me, but looking in the look he gave me when I arrived in that hall I perceived it as one of those subtle power-games and him rubbing in the consequences of my non- compliance in order to drive through a point.

Now I am going to tell you something few of you do consciously experience:

The rare occasion to witness a spiritual war first hand

After he was gone, I found out that part of the reason for him coming was that there was at that time a power-struggle between his top British disciple, who was the deputy head of our college, and the director, who was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, who supposedly did embezzle some money to be sent to Vietnamese people in need.

Unfortunately neither side was prepared to open-heartedly talk to each other:
When questioning the monk, he only replied that it would be “his way not to talk about it”, and made certain that he was gone to a retreat when Yogi Bhajan came.
But on the other hand I did not sense a compassionate approach on behalf of 3HO either.

3HO surely was a total dedicated bunch who like a busy swarm of bees did shoot through the London Academy of Chinese Medicine, so the many students who did not primarily follow 3HO teachings (or did not even know about YB) felt overpowered by them claiming the place for themselves with their “Kundalini-stare” (as Gurusant Singh calls it). Someone described it like this:
“With their Kundalini-Yoga they build up a tremendous amount of will-power,
but then they don’t know what to do with it.”
And indeed, it seemed to be all about strengthening their own group just for the sake of it.

Because both sides did like me, and at the time, I could literally feel being dragged into a spiritual war of both sides, like (the 3HO member and) deputy head of our college “scanning” me at one point for loyalty and then ordering me to clear out the Buddhist monk’s desk, so that the monk perceived it as if I took sides against him and said that I now would be with “the Kundalini-people”.
Not wanting to take sides, this led to me literally “putting my head down” and stay below their spiritual level by going to the pub to drink with fellow students and co-workers, to “ground” me and keep in synch with the common people.

This is something you on your spiritual path have to watch out for – sometimes it is not you having no spiritual discipline, but adverse circumstances may sabotage your internal evolution:
In order to satisfy your karmic need for harmony you at times may sacrifice your evolution, because by preserving your dignity and keeping to walk upright, you might ending up becoming crucified as Jesus did when he did not hide his light under a bushel.

It is very easy at those occasions to hide behind ignorance, because hardly anyone will see that you did.
However – even though it will be initially gratifying to play it safe –
you should not for long pretend to be dumber than you are, because in the long run your ‘playing it safe’ will weaken your character and turn you to a cowardly fence-sitter who will end up merely walking in other people’s footsteps.

~ ~ ~

A month later YB came once more and waved me into his room where he was lying on his bed, because he still was very strong, yet did need to lie a lot in his bed often already.

But I did not enter his room and didn’t even want to talk to him anymore, because the only way I would have opened my heart to him again would have been if we could have talked about my issues with him.
Yet I knew that any criticism would have been dismissed harshly by him. Maybe that’s why he gave me the name “Amar“, because that means something like “free spirit” – probably with a connotation of “untameable”.

3 spirituelle Tugenden: Durchhalten, verlangsamen, ausbalancieren

2019-02-042019-03-12 by Amar, posted in deutsch, instructions, meditation course, Sodarshan Chakra Kriya, spirituality, yoga

Durchhalten

Als ich einmal ein zehn-Tages Kurs Vipassana in Frankreich mitgemacht habe, hatte ich das Glück dem Gründer selbst, Goenka, zuhören zu dürfen, der sagte:

“Die meisten spirituellen Anfänger wechseln ihre Richtung oft,
aber wer Öl finden will, kann nicht mal hier 10m und dort 100m bohren,
sondern muss an der selben Stelle sehr tief bohren, um welches zu finden.”

Die Meisten glauben, dass sie mehr Probleme lösen könnten, wenn sie schnell denken, aber Yogis nennen solches mentales Umherspringen einen “Affengeist”.

Verlangsamen

Yogi Bhajan hat gelehrt, dass Yogis es schaffen ihren Atem auf einmal pro Minute zu verlangsamen, also werden wir beim Atem anfangen, der das Bewusstsein mit dem Unterbewusstsein verbindet: Du kannst sowohl freiwillig gesteuert atmen, als auch in Deinem Schlaf, und auch Dein Unterbewusstsein steuert Deinen Atem durch Deine Gefühle.

Ausbalancieren

Jupiter-aspekte sind :

der Zeigefinger,
die Farbe blau,
das Hals Chakra,
Spiritualität,
und Qualitäten wie die Erweiterung der Karriere, des Körpers und der Aura.

Es kann mit dem geistigen Aspekt des Holzelements in der traditionellen chinesischen Medizin verglichen werden, der HUN heisst.

Und das linke Nasenloch wird der emotionalen Mondseite einer Person zugeordnet.
Daher bringt der Zeigefinger am linken Nasenloch spirituelles Bewusstsein in Deine Emotionen.

Und das ist, wie Sodarshan Chakra Kriya Deinen emotionalen Müll aufräumt.

Danach kannst Du zur Mittelstufe weiter fortschreiten.

2 key virtues: persistence and deceleration

2019-02-032019-05-02 by Amar, posted in instructions, meditation course, Sodarshan Chakra Kriya, spirituality, yoga

persistance

I once had the luck of participating in a 10-day Vipassana course in France
under the personal guidance of its founder Goenka , who said:

“Most spiritual beginners change their discipline ever so often,
but if one wants to find oil, it is futile to drill 10 m here and 100m there.
One has to drill very deep at the same place in order to find it.”

deceleration

Most people think that by thinking fast they could solve more issues, but yogis did call such mental jumping around “a monkey mind”. The transformation is beautifully displayed in the card above which does contain so much symbolism, that it would fill an entire article by itself.

Yogi Bhajan taught that Yogis could manage to breath only once per minute, so we will start only on the breath, which also connects the subconscious to the consciousness: You can breath voluntarily, but also breath in sleep and your breath is affected by your subconscious emotions.

The lesser known history of Yogi Bhajan part 5 – his biggest mistake: religion

2018-05-082018-05-18 by Amar, posted in spirituality, yoga

You may be firm with the psychological term “alter-ego”, but there is an aspect I see which seems not to be recognised too often:

The alter-ego of any winner are the losers s/he did need in order to succeed.
Same applies to anyone claiming the astrological sun-aspect for themselves (which is often taught in 3HO. (This did suit the “american dream” or “reinventing” oneself and “help yourself then god will help you”.)
However, when there is an overbearing and ever gloating member in your circle of friends or your family you usually end up being the one pushed down the gutter of marginalisation for not being able to live up to it. And this is why there are quite a few frustrated enemies of 3HO out there who were used, pushed aside, or their realm (like the Sikh religion for example) was claimed by 3HO.

But you may be surprised that not the dark sides of Yogi Bhajan are adressed here, but a huge lost opportunity which did nullify much of what could have been accomplished.
It is about what was written in this previously reblogged article, or Turning Yogis into Khalsa Sikhs (as found on thefullwiki.org):

Yogi Bhajan in his own words:

“Religion has done the worst. What religion has done is to create the mental coercive state of slaves. Religion didn’t do something to free somebody. It didn’t say: “Go ahead and be!”

So he exactly saw and knew what kind of disasters were and are created in the names of religion – from crusades up to todays terrorism, from the Israel-Palestine-conflict up to the plenty of wars which today are held in the disguise in religion – he knew it and saw it clearly! Yet he continued to precede to contribute towards this problem. This in my eyes is terrible and like someone without even the excuse of having another belief or being in ignorance continues to damage people all for the sake of his own benefit.

It’s like some of the senior 3HO teachers recognising how our earth is destructed but still continue to create huge ecological footprints by flying over to India in the morning, lecturing there, and flying back in the same evening in order to avoid a jetlag. Do they really think that a Westerners lectures on yoga are the only valuable ones in India?

Harbhajan Singh Khalsa (Yogi Bhajan) btw, used his extensive flights around the globe (all as a first class VIP with special treatments) to excuse the fact that he – despite knowing all those health-promoting yoga-exercises: – got a heart disease which made him – the teacher of prana – require a protective respirator.
(And I don’t say this out of spite, but simply to scale his fruits with the many healthclaims of Kundalini-Yoga practicioners.)

When I came to the United States and I became a Sikh and all that, religion was forced on us. You know I am very anti-religion and I studied all the religions. I know all the loopholes. And I have studied every religion.

So by the “country of the free” he felt pushed into a position in which the US-laws of “religious freedom” would give him most power (to become a Minister), and also the freedom (to also get green-cards of foreigners). He opportunistically “used the force” – and here is how he did it:

“I said to myself, ‘Why we have to be Sikhs? What nonsense is this? Forget it!’ Then I looked at myself and said, ‘Wait a minute. There is one way to do it: Give them Baanaa (Distinctive and Gracious Attire). Give them Baanee (Songs of Self-counsel and Inspiration). Give them Seva (A Culture of Service). Give them Simran (Remembrance of the Self in Totality). Put them out in the market. And if by self-awareness they can survive, they will automatically become intuitive.’

“I took a very calculated risk. I said, ‘No Sikhs. I don’t want to have Sikhs. Sikhs for what?’ But I said, ‘If they can stand under 250 million Americans, totally living differently, dealing differently, not saying “Hello” but saying “Sat Nam”, let us see what happens.’

“Well, some people came out really great. And it’s true if you get into yourself in totality, you will have reality.”

“Calculated risk” are the keywords here: It seems that he knew the tricks of giving Americans what they liked in order to make them oblivious for the fact that he threw them out of the frying pan of orthodox Christianity into the fire of breath (and the next religion.

He therewith did miss the probably biggest opportunity to loosen spirituality from its religious chains and therewith really create a “new age” just as it is done in Auroville for example.

Facts are that:

Original Sikhism as such does not promote yoga – something many orthodox Sikhs are now angered about when they are overflooded by 3HO instead of Sikh websites;
Sikhism also does not call to wear all white – their rule actually is to wear white underwear which is why traditional Sikhs wear all kinds of coloured clothes and turbans.
Kundalini Yoga first was mentioned first around the year 700 and therewith is by no means thousands of years old; (source: https://youtu.be/Zwzt9XtSq5Q )
Yes, the vedic or tantric roots are, but that should be distinguished properly in order to avoid confusion.
What Yogi Bhajan taught is NOT traditional Kundalini Yoga, but a mixture of Yoga he learned from his Hindu-Yoga teacher or mere Tantric teachings – teachings which originally was not at all connected to the overly rigid lifestyle he did attach to it. (source: http://yogamag.net/archives/2007/cmar07/tamin.shtml )
In fact there is no other source to his kriyas than Yogi Bhajan’s. Something which should make one suspicious about the originality of such exercises.

What first started as a cultural imposition on behalf of Yogi Bhajan, did end as a cultural appropriation by non-indian members of their self-created Sikh-branch.

Step back for a second and look how many white Western people, how many black members and how many Indian Sikhs are in 3HO. I only so far saw 3 not-all-white people and no Indian whatsoever. (And I am saying this being white myself, btw.)
Doesn’t that make you suspicious that no single Indian Sikh ever joined 3HO?

I saw him coming over to Great Britain, holding a lecture in two original Sikh Gurdwaras and since I drove them around in London for a week, I did what 3HO did – rushed into the religious ceremony – us white dressed paler than pale people standing out – then waiting until he held his speech – and then leaving in the midst of this ceremony in a fashion which might be common in India but considered to be respectless in the West.

He then would could sit in an separate room with religious leaders whilst the common Indian Sikhs ate down in the hall (where I also ate out of embarrassment of 3HO’s elitism.

If I was cynical I even could draw a comparison to a German national leader in my grandfathers times who also came from another nation, was dark haired, used ancient Indian wisdom and spirituality to worldly enforce changes, and denied half of is own past in order to lead people who were not of his liking.

But a nicer comparison would be that to Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr which at the same time discussed the uncertainty relations. Einstein could not endorse it because he said: “That God would choose to play dice with the world is something I cannot believe.”
And therewith Einstein held back science as much as Yogi Bhajan held back the human spiritual liberation by not having been ready to disassociate spiritual self-realization from religion.

~~~

Recently a huge doubt came up when I did watch the above recommended discourse about Kundalini Yoga and it was said that the Kundalini energy would connect one to one lineage by uncoiling. It then dawned upon me that there is something else going on which we as practitioners of his ways are sucked into without even being aware of it:
We are “tuned in” (by the means of the “tuning in” with “Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo”) to the Sikh lineage, which undoubtedly acts as a constructive mind-calmer, but also sets us of into the direction of his lineage which by birth never was ours to begin with.

This made the tune-out song “may the longtime sun shine upon you…” seem like one of those Tibetan monks chanting under the black sun in the Third Reich.

Maybe – only maybe – my tremendous troubles which came up when doing Sodarshan Chakra Kriya were (& are) not all related to my own bad Karma being washed out, but partly due to the fact that

just like in this game where a child is blindfolded, spinned around –

we are actually set into a total different direction than the biography we were on beforehand.

I am not certain whether a Guru-worship will give the Guru power beyond his death, but most certainly people are conditioned to experience visions of the saints and teachers of the lineage they were conditioned to. Hence abrahamic saints may see Jesus, followers of Yogananda may have contact with Mahavatar and Hindus may have visions of one their thousands of sub-divisions of the OM.

So I did ask a senior yoga practitioner from the before mentioned Auroville if this could mean trouble,
and I want to share the wise answer from this seasoned man with you below: (If anyone wants to be connected to JV from Auroville just contact me, and I will forward your mail or comment to him).

“In my opinion, spirituality needs to be distinguished from religion. Though religion may be rooted in spirituality, it diverged form the core axioms, principles and goals of spirituality. For example, One-ness is a core axiom of spatiality but religion are divisive.
Yoga is essentially a practice-based approach to spirituality, the goals being Self-realization and Union with the One. At a more understandable level, it is the alignment and integration of the 5 koshas (sheaths) of Human Being.
Anna-maya Kosha ( physical or food-based sheath)
Prana-maya Kosha ( Energy sheath)
Mano-maya Kosha (mind)
Gnana-maya Kosha (wisdom)
Ananda-maya Kosha (Bliss)
Kundalini Yoga is one branch of Yoga. Once you make some progress, who you were in the past doesn’t matter because you are moving towards One-ness. So, in my opinion, Yoga is open to all. Familial, social, religious and cultural conditioning will be of no consequence as you proceed in your journey.”

JV from Auroville

This gave me great comfort and reminded me
of Adyashanti’s analogy in his talk “the welcome mat” that

“Religions are like welcome mats which should guide us as into our own home,
but unfortunately most people get stuck on worshipping the mat itself
instead of entering through it into the realm of their own divine self.”
Adyashanti

And in the book “Trailanga Swami and Shankari Mataji” in the preface (p.9) is a quote from a kriyayogi about the woman – who supposedly influenced Paramhansa, Ramakrishnadev and Vivekanda:

“Shankari Ma in my opinion is not a follower of Bhakti Yoga, but is trying to solve the problem of life through complete surrender of the self to the Guru, not blindly, but with a rationalistic analysis of the problems of our lifes in its various aspects, believing that religion is an individual problem.“

The lesser known history of Yogi Bhajan part 4 – his dark sides

2018-05-072018-05-08 by Amar, posted in Sodarshan Chakra Kriya, spirituality, yoga

Now that I did prepare you gently by showing you some discrepancies in Yogi Bhajan’s teachings with this article: https://www.academia.edu/4343215/From_Maharaj_to_Mahan_Tantric_The_Construction_of_Yogi_Bhajan_s_Kundalini_Yoga ,
I want to move on to the by far the most difficult part to convey to excited followers of any teacher they revere.

Yes it is beautiful to have ones heart opened by given inspirations, but just as the saying goes that “love makes blind”, so does unconditional Guru-worship which raises a normal human being to a god-like level.

Spirituality is not all about love and excitement – something I can not relate to in many esoteric groups – to me it is about neutrality – the middle path between the negative and positive mind, or as it is taught in the Kabbalah – the middle pillar.

So in order to make balance to my promoting of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings, I will also add a few sources, which indicate that his alter ego by no means was all perfect.

Whilst I myself am not at all in the #meToo spirit, where any accusation, even when made a generation later, equals a verdict up to the point that many careers were destroyed before any legal judgment was passed;
I merely provide the facts of my researches here and will tell you afterwards how I feel about them.

For brevity’s sake I simply provide links so that people who are offended may skip them, and others who are inclined to research may follow up.

There is a compilation of pages about the dark sides of 3HO which I had to pull from the internet archive, because the page now focusses on making money:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130817111858/http://rickross.com/groups/3ho.html
An equal compilation can be found on http://www.wackoWorldOfYogiBhajan.net
(the website name says all about the angle they are coming from)
A forum of a very disappointed former student of Yogi Bhajan who did dedicate 30 years of his life to him: http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php
Another “dis-appointed” student (who “dissed” his “appointment” with 3HO):
http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=8602

In those 4 sources you will find accusations of Yogi Bhajan and 3HO having participated or silently condoned corruption, sexual misconducts and many other things.

Here is how another student of his who still follows his teachings deals with it
(I urge you to click the youtube button and read the comments there to see how many others also have those problems):

And now – as promised my personal intake on it:

My first encounter was when I read some of his teachings, started to practice them, and it was clear to me that this guy was spiritually very gifted and shared great insights.

Then – just as I was doing 2.5 hours of Sodarshan Chakra Kriya daily, I had personal contact with Yogi Bhajan 24 years ago and this was my impression:

He was extremely authoritarian and did cultivate a guru-worship which I didn’t like, but due to his unapproachable aggressive-deflective aura I realised instantly that there was no way to confront him about it in any way, because he made certain that he always had the upper hand the last word and was right in any conversation.

So even when he did flatter me for “becoming an incredible healer and a saint”, I was in doubt whether he just wanted to suck me into his cult-like structure.

The most honest thing I heard him say was “If you do 2.5 hours of Sodarshan Chakra Kriya then there is nothing I can teach you anymore!”, because it was the only time he made himself redundant and bowed to the Kriya which he also said would have been told to do by his teacher.

His dominant nature which then merciful fed (the one he just beforehand put down) some compliments was the ideal material to become a cult-leader, because it invokes the Stockholm-syndrome in which people (especially the ones searching for themselves) feel appreciated mostly by the forces which suppressed them beforehand.

To sum up what does indicate to me that some of those accusations may bear some truth:

He certainly was a root-chakra guy with all the dominance involved, so sexual allegations would not surprise me, especially since he himself said that “no man and woman should be left alone in a room”.
When Jesus said that “you shall know them by their fruits”, I must say that I was exploited a few times by his follower -student-turned Gurus:
- the one who passed on SCK to me sucked $2000 out of me at times when I was totally broke and had nothing and did continue this for decades.
  That Kabbalist from NYC also was a heavy womaniser and did commit adultery.
- altogether I payed a fortune for very expensive 3HO seminars and treatments – a bit too much to leave the impression that spirituality would have been the priority. And all my requests of them employing me in order to get a US-greencard were ignored – I was too uncontrollable to them (hence Y.B. did name me “Amar” which means “free spirit”).
- and sarcastically it was his people and himself who destroyed my new and frail practice of SCK by making me work for them for a fortnight day and night without me even being able to finish my meals, so that afterwards when they left all that was left was a bunch of tremendous anger and no motivation to continue to do kriyas.
  Y.B. on his second meeting waving me jovially into his room to have a private talk did not do the trick anymore. I simply walked away from him, because I knew that I never could have expressed my frustration to someone who wipes away anything he doesn’t want to hear.
Yogi Bhajan got many herbs from our Chinese Medical Pharmacy (which I did grind myself) and never payed – just as hardly any of the teachers who came flying over for a few days (regardless of environmental impact) did of course never declare any of that cash money so it seemed to me that they felt entitled to live above the law for the sake of their higher cause.
Once they visited the British head of 3HO to solve a some private and business issues; me, who was just beginning to stretch my head into the realm of spirituality could literally sense a spiritual war between the 3HO-Sikhs and the director of our college, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, taking place: They walked into hour College of Chinese Medicine and with their “Kundalini Stare” literally took over the place, making it their home, so that the Buddhist monk did flee from his premises to visit a retreat. Students who studied Chinese medicine but not Kundalini-Yoga were puzzled about their fierceness and I personally was sucked straight into this invisible war by having to choose a side – something which was not at all in line with my understanding of all-embracing spirituality.
Hence I started to drink lots of alcohol in order to numb and put a lid on myself.

All teachings are energetically tainted by the energy of the guru – which is the reason why the 3HO leaders are so unyielding stern and hard – they simply invested and suffered half their life to live up to the calvinistic pleasure-condemming demands that all they have left now is their reputation to be senior students “who knew the master” – something they would never destroy by tainting their only source of glamorous wisdom.

And on a personal note:

In the midst whilst writing this article I suddenly became unpleasantly dizzy – nearly stopped, but deemed it important to follow Yogi Bhajan’s own words:
“If you are depressed – press back”.
Now, the next moring I felt very liberated, because I did realise that what he did with me was an energetic violation – not as spectacular as the sexual violations focussed on in the current zeitgeist, nevertheless a deep hidden trauma (of which we all have tons and don’t even know it).

Ironically what Bhajan said came true for himself too:
It is the aquarian age everything will come out – so also do his dark sides he did gloss over with overconfidence and his self-created role as a religious leader.

“All the clever tricks you use, the countless little tricks
– not even one will go along with you.

Surrender yourself and walk the way of Spirit’s Will.
Naanak – be with what is already written.”

-Japji Sahib, Pauree 1, Guru Nanak

<previous: how he twisted {hi(s}tory) towards Sikhism next > Harbhajan Singh Khalsa’s biggest mistake

The lesser known history of Yogi Bhajan part 3 – how he twisted {hi(s}tory) towards Sikhism.

2018-05-062018-05-06 by Amar, posted in Sodarshan Chakra Kriya

This is the third and last part of the article named:
From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga
Permalink: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6r63q6qn
Journal: Sikh Formations, 8(3)
Author: Deslippe, Philip Roland
Publication Date: 2013-03-14

Sant Hazara Singh and the Title of Mahan Tantric

In the spring of 1971, shortly after returning from the India trip, Yogi Bhajan announced to his students after his morning meditation that he had been passed the mantle of “Mahan Tantric.” According to Yogi Bhajan, there was only a single Mahan Tantric on the earth at any time, and his earlier pride meant that the title was previously passed to another student of Sant Hazara Singh, the Tibetan Lama Lilan Po, before coming to him (Gurutej S. Khalsa 1995, 15). As understood in 3HO, it is only under the watch of the singular Mahan Tantric that White Tantric Yoga can be done, a non-sexual form of yoga in which his students would sit in rows facing each other in male/female pairs, staring into one another’s eyes, and under the supervision of the Mahan Tantric, perform exercises lasting up to an hour or more.(38) Both the timing and the title were curious, since at the very least, Tantric courses were taught in both Los Angeles and Arizona in the Fall of 1970, well before the title of Mahan Tantric was bestowed, and early teachers of Kundalini Yoga also taught classes of the same type of yoga before they were told it “took too much energy out of Yogi Bhajan” (Schneider 2003, 71).(39)

The discrepancies make sense in light of the historical housecleaning that was quickly done in early-1971 in the wake of Yogi Bhajan’s break from Virsa Singh. Maharaj Virsa Singh was struck from the record within 3HO, as were the minor living teachers that were listed in the July 1970 “Who Is Yogi Bhajan?” article in Beads of Truth. If Maharaj Virsa Singh was referred to, it was never by name and always as a type of boogey-man who in numerous recountings challenged Yogi Bhajan, tried to keep Yogi Bhajan’s students from becoming Sikhs, and was covertly responsible for any dissonance between Western and Punjabi Sikhs (S.K. Khalsa 2010). From the first India trip onwards, all of the influences that Yogi Bhajan claimed and placed with the lineage of Kundalini and White Tantric Yoga, became inaccessible: from Sant Hazara Singh to the Tibetan Lama Lilan Po to the Sikh Gurus themselves. As the former executive secretary of 3HO has described it, “All of Yogi Bhajan’s claims about lineage or teachers were not able to be substantiated since all teachers that he referred to were (conveniently) expired.”(40)

Guru Ram Das and the figure of Sant Hazara Singh took center stage, and any deference or mythologizing given to Maharaj Virsa Singh was now cast onto them or to Yogi Bhajan himself.

The original story of Yogi Bhajan cleaning toilets for Maharaj Virsa Singh, which was turned into washing the floors at the Golden Temple after work, was again recast into part of Yogi Bhajan’s claimed narrative of studying under Sant Hazara Singh (Yogi Bhajan 1996a, 1999). The description of the Mahan Tantric, a unique title held by only one person on earth at a time, echoed Yogi Bhajan’s previous description of Maharaj Virsa Singh as “the master of the time.” Yogi Bhajan’s dress of flowing all-white clothing and the even way he sat bore a striking resemblance to how Maharaj Virsa Singh [379] carried himself.(41) The Naam that Yogi Bhajan said he received from his former master was now referred to in 3HO publications as “our Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru” (Khalsa 1971a). In October of 1971, 3HO began the practice of celebrating the birthday of Guru Ram Das, and soon that annual celebration would revolve around chanting the shabad Dhan Dhan Ram Das Guru for two and a half hours just as Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru was chanted to honor Maharaj Virsa Singh on his birthday (Khalsa 1971b).

While the figure of Sant Hazara Singh became central, when all of Yogi Bhajan’s claims about him are brought together, it seems highly improbable that if such a figure existed that he would not have been documented elsewhere.(42) In addition to being a master of Sikh martial arts, Kundalini Yoga, White Tantric Yoga, and someone who had memorized the entire Siri Guru Granth Sahib, Yogi Bhajan claimed that his Sant Hazara Singh organized an armed defense of the city of Anandpur during Partition, remained ageless and had over 250 students including the Tibetan Lama Lilan Po who would have been remarkably studying under a Sikh teacher in the Punjab at a time when Tibet was closed off (Khalsa 1979, 29; Yogi Bhajan 1983, 1996b). The man Yogi Bhajan appointed as his biographer, Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa, has by his own admission never found outside information on the figure of Sant Hazara Singh.(43)

Beyond the late introduction of Sant Hazara Singh and the convenient timing of his elevated importance, perhaps the strongest evidence against his existence comes from Yogi Bhajan himself. The accepted narrative within 3HO, taken from Yogi Bhajan directly, is that he trained under Sant Hazara Singh from the age of seven until sixteen and a half, when he was declared a Master by his teacher (Yogi Bhajan 1990a).(44) However, on numerous occasions during his first years in the West, Yogi Bhajan himself dated the beginning of his yogic study to a time after he would later claim to have finished his studies under Sant Hazara Singh. Yogi Bhajan initially told reporters that he had been studying yoga “since he was eighteen” and in interviews in both 1968 and 1969, he claimed to have studied for twenty-two years, and in 1970 that number was adjusted to twenty-three years, which at 1946 and 1947, would have made him either seventeen or eighteen years old when he began to study yoga (Hampton 1968; Altschul 1969; Anonymous 1970b; Gray 1970). An early article by the “mother of 3HO” Shakti Parwha Kaur also describes Yogi Bhajan’s meeting with Virsa Singh as the apex of the former’s “22 years search for Truth,” once again placing the beginning of Yogi Bhajan’s spiritual quest at a post- Partition time following his claimed completion of studies under Sant Hazara Singh (S.P.K. Khalsa 1970b, 2).

With decades to solidify, this shift has become the accepted standard within 3HO today, where nearly all practitioners know of the claimed connections the practice has with Sant Hazara Singh and Guru Ram Das, but hardly anyone is aware of Maharaj Virsa Singh or Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhirendra_Brahmachari

Conclusion

When viewed openly, the early history of 3HO is remarkable in the extent that it was so thoroughly revised and replaced as the organization aged, with a figure so initially revered as Maharaj Virsa Singh eliminated and a theoretically essential figure as Sant Hazara Singh introduced only after a year and a half of going unnoted. One explanation [381] of the successful revision of Kundalini Yoga’s history is simply timing. Since these changes occurred in the first two years, there was less of a past to revise, and the passing of time helped to further solidify the new narrative as many of the earliest people in 3HO cycled out of the group. In later years, many students who joined after the first two years were recognized as “old-timers” with decades of experience, and their understanding was given merit even though they were ignorant of 3HO’s earliest and most formative years that often contradicted its later understanding of itself.

The most significant aspect of the hidden history of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga, is the central epistemological problem at the foundation of 3HO’s understanding of Kundalini Yoga and its own lineage. Like a small restaurant that places mirrors on opposing walls to create the appearance of depth, it is from the singular person of Yogi Bhajan that all information about the lineage and practice of his Kundalini Yoga originates. From the lectures of Yogi Bhajan and notes taken in his classes came the instruction manuals, books, and 3HO periodicals such asBeads of Truth and the later Aquarian Times that elucidated the practice of Kundalini Yoga. In time, despite contradictions within Yogi Bhajan’s statements and a lack of supporting evidence from secondary sources, outside writers and scholars relied on 3HO’s own materials to describe the composition and lineage of Kundalini Yoga to wider audiences, creating a long and citable bibliography that seems to verify the claims made about the practice.

Yogi Bhajan was free to revise the understanding his students had of Kundalini Yoga, its origins, and his own personal lineage, since like many other charismatic leaders within New Religious Movements, his word was accepted prima facia by his followers without any need for outside confirmation. While Yogi Bhajan himself can be seen as the primary editor of the understanding of his Kundalini Yoga and its claimed lineage, this filtering was reinforced by figures close to him who wrote and edited 3HO’s periodicals and literature. By eliminating certain events and quotes and emphasizing others, they often revised history and gave a more consistent form to the narratives within 3HO. Shakti Parwha Kaur would say in late-1972, despite everything she wrote in Beads of Truth about Maharaj Virsa Singh in 1970, that when she first met Yogi Bhajan “he had placed his total faith, his total dependence” on Guru Ram Das (Khalsa 1972). With more rank-and-file members this process of resolving conflicting and disparate information could be more subtle, even to the point of being unconscious. An unwitting description of this approach can been seen in Ravi Har Singh, who in describing the process of writing a book based on Yogi Bhajan’s “non-linear and multidimensional” lectures recently admitted, “I found that he (Yogi Bhajan) rarely develops a concept completely in one place, at one sitting. Instead he often delivers fragments of concepts across a wide number of lectures. It is up to the researcher to apply a good dose of intuition to bring these fragments together into a coherent whole” (Khalsa 2011).

Adding another dimension to Yogi Bhajan’s role as the filter of knowledge in the earliest years of 3HO were the barriers of language, culture, and personal experience. On the first trip to India none of Yogi Bhajan’s students spoke Punjabi or were familiar with Sikh customs, let alone Indian culture at large. While some of Yogi Bhajan’s students would describe firsthand his break with Maharaj Virsa Singh or the events at the [382] Golden Temple in 1971, it is doubtful that they themselves understood what was occurring at the time independent of what they were told via Yogi Bhajan. Even a student who was nearby when Guru Ram Das supposedly appeared to Yogi Bhajan on the 1970-71 trip and reverentially verified his story, did not see the fourth Sikh Guru with her own eyes, and could only find proof through her own interpretation of what she saw in Yogi Bhajan and what he related (Khalsa 1978).

A close inspection of the events between 1968 and 1971 suggest that Yogi Bhajan was acutely aware of the ways he was presenting his yoga and often reimagined it to suit his audience: at times for long term goals and at other times to suit immediate needs. The figures of Sant Hazara Singh, and to a lesser extent, Lama Lilan Po, were used to cover for the actual personages and influences of Maharaj Virsa Singh and Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari, giving a provenance to Kundalini Yoga that also secured Yogi Bhajan’s possession of it. Without the lineage that he claimed and without creating Kundalini Yoga out of whole cloth, Yogi Bhajan is best thought of as neither a lineage holder nor inventor, but a bricoleur who brought together elements of different practices and presented them to his students as a distinct entity with a romantic mythology surrounding it. Perhaps this says as much about Yogi Bhajan as it does about the expectations and hopes of those who believed him.

While this paper suggests a radical shift in the accepted understanding of what Kundalini Yoga is and who Yogi Bhajan was, in one sense it also suggests a lateral shift. When the popular mythology of Kundalini Yoga is inspected and dismantled, an ancient lineage of Kundalini Yoga and the figure of Sant Hazara Singh are lost, but we are still left with esoteric yogic practices and a powerful teacher in the Sūkṣma Vyāyāma of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari and the figure of Maharaj Virsa Singh. This provides both a truer sense of Kundalini Yoga and a more realistic explanation of why it works as it does for its practitioners.

Some critics and ex-members of 3HO try to dismiss the practice of Kundalini Yoga entirely, often basing their view on contradictory evidence within Yogi Bhajan’s claims or by contrasting the practice with accepted Sikh orthopraxy. But with vast numbers of teachers and students of Kundalini Yoga over the decades, it is unrealistic to think that all of them were deluded, found no benefits through its practice, or did not have profound experiences through it. Kundalini Yoga was often described by Yogi Bhajan and 3HO as “The Yoga of Experience.” When viewed critically and historically, perhaps the individual experience of its practitioners, and not the figure of Yogi Bhajan or the mythology of the Golden Chain, is the most honest and fruitful vantage from which to view it.[383]

~~~ End of article ~~~

< previous: his Janus-face between Sikhism and Yoga
coming up: the dark side of Yogi Bhajan

My personal 2cents:

Maybe Y.B.’s transformation towards Sikhism had something to do with the US-laws which grant religious workers green cards.
The ones who don’t believe this article may the read how he came to his conclusion by reading the entire original here,
or simply look at the extensive research done as documented in the Footnotes and References below:

Footnotes:

(38) Yogi Bhajan originally taught these White Tantric Yoga classes in person, and later with declining health the courses were done through video tapes and in-person representative “Tantric Facilitators,” a format that continues today, years after Yogi Bhajan’s death.
(39) Interview with Antion Vic Briggs, telephone, 5 July 2011. Interview with Jack Sokol, telephone, 7 September 2011. Sokol was an early student of Kundalini Yoga and studied under “Baba” Don Conreaux at Arizona State University in early 1970 before teaching and going through a ten-day teaching training in Los Angeles in the summer of 1971.
(40) Interview with Pamela Dyson, telephone, 23 September 2011.
(41) Interview with Antion Vic Briggs, telephone, 5 July 2011.
(42) There were notable Hazara Singhs who were outside the timeline Yogi Bhajan gave for his claimed teacher: a Bhai Hazara Singh who was killed in 1921 and made one of the first two martyrs of the Gudwara Reform Movement, and a Baba Hazara Singh Sevawale, who supervised the building of the Gudwara in Taraori, north of Karnal, in 1970. If there was in fact a reality-based source for Yogi Bhajan’s early teacher, the most likely suspect who comes remotely close to the timeline that Yogi Bhajan established for him was a Sant Hazara Singh from the village Chhote Ghuman. According to the author Dr. Kulwant Singh Khokhar, who frequently met with him and mentioned him in the acknowledgements section of his 1999 book Way of the Saffron Cloud, this Sant Hazara Singh was an uneducated, retired farmer who lived very modestly and barely spoke, a sharp contrast with the tales Yogi Bhajan told of his Sant Hazara Singh.
(43) Correspondence with Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa, email, 15 June 15, 2011.
(44) This contrasts with the earlier claim in the July 1970 issue of Beads of Truth that this mastery was obtained by Yogi Bhajan at the age of eighteen.

References:

3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) 1970. Display ad. Beads of Truth, March, vol. 1 no. 3. Altschul, Marty. 1969. Tense housewives, businessmen try relaxing Hindu way. Los Angeles Times, June 22.
Anonymous. 1970. Guru & mantra yoga. Beads of Truth, March vol. 1 no. 2, 1.
Anonymous. 1970. Yogi on yoga. Santa Fe New Mexican, March 20.
Anonymous. 1970. Television notice. Arizona Republic, November 28.
Anonymous. 1971. Yogi bailed out, flies back to US. Hindustan Times, March 20.
Aquarian, Isis [pseud.], ed. 2007. The Source: The untold story of Father Yod, YaHoWa13 and the Source Family. Los Angeles: Process Media.
Brahmachari, Swami Dhirendra. 1970. Yogāsana Vijñāna: The science of yoga. New Delhi: Asia Publishing House.
Brahmachari, Swami Dhirendra. 1973 [First English edition published 1965]. Yoga: Yogic SūkṣmaVyāyāma. New Delhi: Indian Book Company.
Claiborne, William L. 1970. Yoga students set India trip for drug study. The Washington Post, December 23, B2.
Fisher, Mary Pat. 1992. Everyday miracles in the House of God: Stories from Gobind Sadan, India. New Delhi: Gobind Sadan.
Gray, Brett. 1970. World must purify self soon, yoga warns. Orlando Sentinel, May 31. Hampton, Edna. 1968. Yoga’s challenges and promises. The Globe and Mail, November 28.
Khalsa, Gurucharan Singh, ed. 1975. Kundalini meditation manual for intermediate students. Pomona, California: Kundalini Research Institute Publications.

Khalsa, Gurucharan Singh, and Rama Kirn Singh. 1976. Yoga: The origins and development of yoga and the science of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. Kundalini Quarterly, Summer, 2-8.
Khlasa, Gurutej Singh. 1995. Khalsa is born in the west. In The history of Sikh Dharma of the Western Hemisphere. Edited by Shanti Kaur Khalsa, 1-25. Espanola, New Mexico: Sikh Dharma International.
Khalsa, Krishna Kaur. 1978. Guru Guru Wahe Guru Guru Ram Das Guru. Sikh Dharma Brotherhood, Winter, 8-9.
Khalsa, Premka Kaur [Pamela Dyson]. 1979. Early history. In The man called the Siri Singh Sahib, edited by Premka Kaur Khalsa et al. Los Angeles: Sikh Dharma.
Khalsa, Ravi Har Singh. 2011. Becoming Aquarian: How a book deal changed my sadhana and me. 3HO Foundation Kundalini Yoga News. Posted July 21.http://www.3ho.org/ecommunity/2011/07/becoming-aquarian-how-a-book-deal-changed-my- sadhana-and-me-2/
Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 1970. High times. Beads of Truth, March, vol. 1 no. 2. Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 1970. Who is Yogi Bhajan? Beads of Truth, July, 2. Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 1970. High times. Beads of Truth, September. Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 1971. High times. Beads of Truth, Autumn.
Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 1971. Guru Ram Das Ji’s birthday celebration. Beads of Truth, Autumn, 48.
Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 1972. Lecture at Grace of God Course in Tucson, Arizona, November 10.
Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 1996. Kundalini yoga: The flow of eternal power. New York: Perigee.
Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur. 2003. Kundalini postures and poetry. New York: Perigee.
Khalsa, Shanti Kaur. 2005. My teacher’s teacher. Aquarian Times, Winter, 38-41.
Khalsa, Shanti Kaur. 2010. Lecture at Gudwara in Espanola, New Mexico, August 7.
Schneider, Carrie. 2003. Krishna Kaur. In American yoga: The paths and practices of America’s greatest yoga masters. Edited by Carrie Schneider, 68-75. New York: Sterling.
Sharma, Suresh. 1971. Warrant issued against Yogi. Hindustan Times, March 19.
Singh, Bhai Himat. 2009. A brief biography of Bhai Himat. Posted December 10.http://www.bhaihimat.com/bio1.htm
Singh, Bhai Kirpal [AKA Major Sahib]. 2010. Major Sahib’s own story. Gobind Sadan USA. Accessed December 11. http://www.gobindsadan.org/usa-website/41-gobind-sadan- institute/scholars/131-bhai-kirpal-singh.html
Singh, Ralph. 2008. A path to follow: Reflections of a student at Gobind Sadan. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1969. Class lecture in Los Angeles, February 8. [Reprinted in Beads of Truth vol.1 no. 7]
Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1972. Mantra: From lectures by Yogi Bhajan. Beads of Truth, Summer, 7. Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1983. Ishnaan, The science of hydrotherapy. Class lecture at unknown location.

Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1987. Class lecture at Ladies’ Camp in Espanola, New Mexico, July 31. Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1990. What it means to be a teacher. Class lecture in Los Angeles, March 23.
Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1990. The meaning of dharma. Class lecture in Los Angeles, April 8.
Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1995. Addresses the healers. Lecture to Khalsa Chiropractic Association, August 2.
Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1996. What is happiness? Class lecture at Master’s Touch course in Espanola, New Mexico, July 20.
Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1996. The golden rules of a teacher. Class lecture at Master’s Touch course in Espanola, New Mexico. July 22.
Yogi Bhajan [pseud.]. 1999. The experience of your self. Class lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa, December 12.

The lesser known history of Yogi Bhajan part 2 – his Janus-face between Sikhism and Yoga

2018-05-052018-05-06 by Amar, posted in spirituality, yoga

This is part 2 of the article
From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric:
The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga Philip Deslippe
which you can read in full here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6r63q6qn
(the first part can be read here)

The Construction of Kundalini Yoga

When placed alongside the teachings of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari and Maharaj Virsa Singh, it becomes strikingly apparent that at least in its earliest years, Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga was not a distinct practice, but essentially a combination of yogic mechanics learned from the former and the Sikh-derived mantras and chanting from the latter. Sometimes these two practices would be juxtaposed, and Kundalini Yoga students would chant Naam immediately following a yoga set. They were also frequently intertwined, and rhythmic yogic exercises were coordinated with mantras such as “Sat Nam” and “Wahe Guru,” and the chanting of “Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wha Guru” was done with deep breathing and the application of internal body locks known as bandhas. Yogi Bhajan himself acknowledged this coalescence in an early lecture, saying

There are two ways to find the Divine. One way is that you open the solar plexus and charge your solar centers. You get direct with the Divine. The other method is [374] that you concentrate and meditate and get this sound (Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wha Guru) in you, and it directly charges your solar centers and in this method you get the Divine light to you.

(Yogi Bhajan 1972, 7)

While this mélange was presented as a seamless form to students of his Kundalini Yoga, Yogi Bhajan was radically combining two disparate practices and making significant modifications to each. Maharaj Virsa Singh did not believe in yoga as a spiritual path, and his followers at Gobind Sadan did not practice any form of physical yoga. Yogi Bhajan’s references to Maharaj Virsa Singh as the inspiration under which he learned “Nam Yoga, Laya Yoga, and Mantra Yoga,” were rhetorical, trying to include Maharaj Virsa Singh within his system by way of a very broad definition of the word “yoga” which itself was never used at Gobind Sadan (Khalsa 1970b, 2).(17) Similarly, Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari’s teaching of yoga and Sūkṣma Vyāyāma was done firmly within the context of the Yamas and Niyamas, or the codes of conduct found within the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, particularly complete sexual continence and a strict interpretation ofMitahara or diet that would have forbid the “trinity roots” or garlic, onions, and ginger that Yogi Bhajan promoted to his students. In the process of combining the teachings of Maharaj Virsa Singh and Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari, Yogi Bhajan also made his Kundalini Yoga more palatable and appealing to his young audience in the United States.

While Kundalini Yoga comingled elements from both Maharaj Virsa Singh and Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari, each these two figures were represented in distinctive ways that point towards a conscious and deliberate construction by Yogi Bhajan of himself as a leader and Kundalini Yoga as a distinct practice. For Yogi Bhajan’s initial students, Maharaj Virsa Singh was openly acknowledged as the teacher of Yogi Bhajan and a powerful, mythologized touchstone for their practice. Many early students, unaware of one another, echo the claim that the early years of 3HO were “all about Virsa Singh.”(18) In stark contrast, these same students knew little about Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari, hearing about him as an associate of Yogi Bhajan or the head of a yoga center Yogi Bhajan taught at, if at all. To an outside audience, it was just the opposite. Yogi Bhajan’s connection to Maharaj Virsa Singh was never mentioned to the press or public, while he constantly used the professional credential of being of Swami Dhirendra’s “House of Yoga of Vishwayatan Ashram” and pointed out its two most famous pupils, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The reasons for claiming Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari publically and Maharaj Virsa Singh privately make sense in the context of the time. The respectable and professional credential of the former would make Yogi Bhajan look more serious and noteworthy for newspaper readers and the general public. For his young students, most of whom were primed on the lore of Carlos Castaneda, Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, and tales of Zen masters, a teacher who was a student of a great teacher had a stronger claim to spiritual knowledge and power than an “orphaned” or “self-realized” teacher without a pedigree that pointed to an established lineage or antiquity. Yogi Bhajan would paradoxically be more significant as the student of a great master than as the head of his own singular and contemporarily constructed practice.

But lineage was a double-edged sword. Most spiritual teachers who came to the United States from the East in the late-1960s had received their position after the passing of their own teacher, and mundanely speaking, risked none of what they built in the [375] West by praising their forbearers. As attested to by the students of Baba Ram Das who went to India to find his teacher Neem Karoli Baba, or the readers of Carlos Castaneda’s works who ventured into the Mexican desert to find his alleged and elusive Yaqui guide Don Juan, a living teacher of a teacher who was even remotely accessible could prove to be a legitimate rival. Yogi Bhajan was in the awkward position of having not one, but two of his teachers alive, well, and available to his own students. Additionally, there were serious disconnects between what he taught his students and what his claimed teachers taught. This tension would grow within the rapid expansion of Yogi Bhajan’s first two years as a teacher in the West, and would foster a radical shift in how he portrayed himself and his students understood him in the wake of a catastrophic and dynamic three-month trip Yogi Bhajan took with his students to India in late- 1970 and early-1971.

The longterm-anger of the traumatised student in this ^ video (who isn’t the writer of this article) shows how domination or misdirection of innocent seekers can damage people’s lifes. Gurusant could never totally shed Yogi Bhajan’s conditioning, so he kept the traditional Sikh-religion, but threw Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga over board.

The Raising of Kundalini Yoga and the India Trip of 1970-71

The late-Sixties were an incredible boom time for Eastern spiritual teachers in the West. For someone like Yogi Bhajan, charismatic, physically imposing, and offering the secrets of the mythical and dangerous kundalini energy, Los Angeles in 1969 was the right place at the right time. While Yogi Bhajan’s initial plans in America were to sell items to Hippies as part of an import/export business (fitting for a customs officer), he quickly made yoga his business.(19) There seemed to be no limits to his growth among Hippies as a teacher in his own right, and with an almost franchise-like pattern, Yogi Bhajan offered an accelerated teacher training program consisting of only a few weeks, and then quickly dispatched his newly minted teachers across the country to open satellite 3HO ashrams. Soon, there were Kundalini Yoga teachers in a rapidly expanding list of college towns and major cities.

In this atmosphere of seemingly limitless possibilities for a yoga teacher, Yogi Bhajan’s view of himself and role as a teacher began to quickly shift. As the year 1970 unfolded, Yogi Bhajan began to modify his previous claims and distanced himself from Maharaj Virsa Singh in three main ways: the reverence of Maharaj Virsa Singh was diluted as he became the most important teacher within an ever-expanding list of teachers Yogi Bhajan claimed, the figure of Guru Ram Das, the fourth Sikh Guru, was introduced as Yogi Bhajan’s “personal Guru,” and Yogi Bhajan himself was increasingly placed in the role once reserved for Maharaj Virsa Singh, often in the same terms.

In July of 1970, Beads of Truth published a one-page article titled “Who Is Yogi Bhajan?” which reads as part biography and part resume, with a lengthy list of the teachers that Yogi Bhajan studied with. This article, nearly a year and a half after Yogi Bhajan began to teach Kundalini Yoga in the United States, appears to be the first mention in print of the figure of Sant Hazara Singh, who in two brief lines is mentioned as the teacher of “Kundalini Yoga and other various yogas.” The list continued with Yogi Bhajan’s grandfather Bhai Fatha Singh, Sant Ranjit Singh who taught “universal spirituality” and comparative religions, Swami Devmurti under who Yogi Bhajan obtained “mastery of Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga,” Acharya Narinder Dev of Yoga Smitri in New Delhi who taught Yogi Bhajan hatha yoga and “the impact and balance of the nervous system,” the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh where Yogi Bhajan “was able to drink deep and fill his mind and heart with the Sanatana Dharma,” and Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari [376] who taught “Yoga Therapy” and at whose ashram Yogi Bhajan claimed to be “Senior Professor of Yoga.”(20)

The early account Yogi Bhajan offered of washing the bathrooms for Maharaj Virsa Singh was changed to him “finishing his duties at the airport” and going “directly to the famous Golden Temple at Amritsar where his wife would bring food and with the children, join him for dinner, before he started his daily routine of scrubbing the floor of the temple” (Khalsa 1970b).(21) While Maharaj Virsa Singh was still revered as “Master,” he was viewed more as a capstone to Yogi Bhajan’s lifetime of spiritual searching, which was curiously a process of searching that now had mastery of Kundalini Yoga at its mid-point.

In the spring of 1970 photographs began to be sold of Yogi Bhajan, clad in all white, seated in full-lotus with his palms together at his chest, staring deeply into the camera lens (3HO 1970).(22) Around the same time, an enthusiastic Kundalini Yoga student encouraged readers of Beads of Truth to “meditate on your Guru’s picture, see through his eyes,” and another student who taught Kundalini Yoga in Memphis remembers being told to bow before the picture of Yogi Bhajan and seek guidance from him before teaching each class (Anonymous 1970a).(23) By the summer of 1970 Yogi Bhajan was regularly flanked in print by the titles “spiritual guiding force of 3HO” and “Master of Kundalini Yoga.” The sandals of Maharaj Virsa Singh no longer had their place on Yogi Bhajan’s bed; in both a literal and symbolic sense, that space was now his.(24)

In the last few days of 1970 Yogi Bhajan took a group of approximately eighty students for a three-month spiritual pilgrimage to India. Yogi Bhajan told a reporter shortly before the trip that the group was on a fact-finding mission in India to research how to best get the youth of America off drugs via yoga (Claiborne 1970). For those within 3HO, the point of the trip was to visit and stay at Gobind Sadan, “home of Yogi Bhajan’s beloved master, Maharaj Virsa Singh Ji”( Khalsa 1970c, 11). Yogi Bhajan told Jim Baker, one of his senior students in Los Angeles, to come on the trip for the purpose of getting the blessing of his teacher (Aquarian 2007, 46).

The trip would end up radically shifting its focus and on the group’s return three-months later Maharaj Virsa Singh would be persona non grata, the figures of Sant Hazara Singh and Guru Ram Das would become central, and Yogi Bhajan would audaciously claim titles of Sikh administrative authority over half of the globe and Tantric mastership. In light of his growing following and shifting view of his role as a leader, even if Yogi Bhajan did in fact leave India in the fall of 1968 as a devout student of Maharaj Virsa Singh, then it is doubtful that he returned to India two years later as one, given the shift in the portrayal of himself and Maharaj Virsa Singh.(25) It is also doubtful that he would not have foreseen a conflict with the major differences in what he was teaching his students and what Maharaj Virsa Singh was teaching at Gobind Sadan. If Yogi Bhajan was not intentionally looking for a break from his master, then it was a development he would have welcomed.

Almost immediately upon arrival, the jetlagged group was welcomed by Indira Gandhi at the gardens of the prime minister’s palace, where one of Yogi Bhajan’s students, Andrew Ungerleider, demonstrated hatha yoga postures for her and Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari. Indira Gandhi, moved by the interest the young Americans had in India, spoke to the group, and then they all held hands and chanted “Om” together.(26)(27) The group then went outside the city to Gobind Sadan, but in less than [377] a week, Yogi Bhajan dramatically broke from Maharaj Virsa Singh and the group quickly left Gobind Sadan and relocated to a mango farm. One American student remembers the group being suddenly told that Virsa Singh was not Yogi Bhajan’s teacher and that the departure was political, with Maharaj Virsa Singh wanting Yogi Bhajan to support someone politically, although it is hard to imagine Yogi Bhajan, a mid-level customs officer over two years removed from India, having any amount of political influence worth fighting over in the elections that were taking place at the time.(28)

Yogi Bhajan would later claim that he left because Maharaj Virsa Singh wanted to be recognized as Yogi Bhajan’s teacher, which seems strange since Yogi Bhajan claimed as much time and time again. Yogi Bhajan insisted in later retellings that the fourth Sikh Guru, Guru Ram Das, was his true teacher. According to Yogi Bhajan, Maharaj Virsa Singh asked if in keeping with having a guru, if Guru Ram Das gave Yogi Bhajan a mantra, and the next morning during his personal meditation, Guru Ram Das tangibly appeared in front of Yogi Bhajan and gave him the mantra “Guru Guru Wahe Guru Guru Ram Das Guru.”(29) The story was frequently repeated by Yogi Bhajan over the years and seemed to serve several ongoing purposes simultaneously: solidify the claim of Guru Ram Das as Yogi Bhajan’s personal Guru, position Guru Ram Das as the patron saint of 3HO, further link Yogi Bhajan and Kundalini Yoga to the Sikh tradition, and put distance between Yogi Bhajan and his previously claimed devotion to Maharaj Virsa Singh (Yogi Bhajan 1987, 1990b, 1995).

Those who were closest to Yogi Bhajan and Maharaj Virsa Singh recount much more material and directly embarrassing reasons for the former breaking from the latter. Early devotees of Maharaj Virsa Singh recall him telling the group of students in front of Yogi Bhajan that he never taught anyone yoga and that yoga had nothing to do with Sikhism. Rather, for Maharaj Virsa Singh, Gobind Sadan and its inspiration from Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh was the model for the spiritual path: hard work, remembrance of God, taking money from no one, and sharing with others in need. Yogi Bhajan’s secretary during the trip, Premka Kaur, said “he had to be in a lineage… he couldn’t let someone else have it anyway because he would lose that control.”(30) Another person present recalled Yogi Bhajan wanting a type of territorial agreement in which Yogi Bhajan would “keep” his students and Gobind Sadan would become a type of “3HO East.”(31) Yogi Bhajan’s proposal was laughed at by Maharaj Virsa Singh and with self-induced pressure, Yogi Bhajan left soon after in a huff.(32)

Keeping the mango farm as a base, the trip dramatically shifted and despite no previous mentioned intention of Sikhism being a focus on the trip, day after day the group went to one Gudwara after another. Students were dressed in white Punjabi clothes, performed basic kirtan, and were told to not mention yoga. One participant remembers being told, “If Indian Sikhs ask you anything about what you’re doing, just say ‘Naam Japo.’”(33) The idea of American “Gora Sikhs” was unimaginable in the Punjab, and Yogi Bhajan’s students drew large crowds where they went. The buzz around the group grew and in early March they were hosted at the Golden Temple in Amritsar where Yogi Bhajan presented himself as a Sikh missionary and was feted. Some members of the group were married and others took Amrit, although it is doubtful that they knew the details or larger implications of what they were doing. One recalls that they were told what to do and how to carry themselves. “Basically none of us knew what we were even doing… we were just silent pawns in however we wanted to be portrayed… just following the instructions of (Yogi Bhajan).”(34) In a bizarre crescendo, the India trip [378] ended with Yogi Bhajan being arrested on charges of defrauding a man named Amarjit Singh for 10,000 rupees, quickly being bailed out, and then fleeing the country with his students after being nearly stopped at the airport (Sharma 1971; Anonymous 1971).(35)(36)(37)

Footnotes:
(17) If the practice of Naam was common among both students of Yogi Bhajan and Maharaj Virsa Singh, the mechanical and technical practice by the former clearly set it apart from the devotional and emotional practice by the latter.
(18) Interview with Antion Vic Briggs, telephone, 5 July 2011. Interview with Ron Brent, telephone, 6 January 2011.
(19) Interview with Warren Stagg, telephone, 8 June 2011
(20) There is also evidence from a student who spoke at length with Yogi Bhajan for the very logical possibility that Yogi Bhajan’s knowledge of yoga, meditation, and related subjects were not entirely based on these teachers but also heavily supplemented by books and other minor figures. See Harrysingh1 (pseud.), comment on “The Sikh Connection,” The Wacko World of Yogi Bhajan, comment posted on February 8, 2005, http://forums.delphiforums.com/KamallaRose/messages?msg=579.39.
(21) Considering the 300 miles that separates the airport in New Delhi from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the possibility of such a commute is extremely unlikely.
(22) This photograph was also sold in a cropped version with only Yogi Bhajan’s face in what seems to be a prototype of the “Tratakam” portrait of him.
(23) Interview with Jim Migdoll, telephone, 7 September 2011. Migdoll was involved in 3HO from early to late-1970, and was sent to Memphis, Tennessee during that time to teach the flagship Kundalini Yoga classes there.
(24) An account of Yogi Bhajan’s sleeping habits was given by early students of his in Florida in their account of an early 1970 visit. See “Early History of the 3HO Foundation According to Hari Singh and Hari Kaur Bird Khalsa,” last modified July 19, 2012, http://www.harisingh.com/3HOHistory.htm.
(25) In the commemorative book The Man Called The Siri Singh Sahib, the Punjabi-born and London-based journalist Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, described meeting with Yogi Bhajan at Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari’s Vishwayatan Ashram in early 1968, well before supposedly being told to go to the West by Maharaj Virsa Singh, in which he heard from him that inspired by “some mysterious call from within” he “was planning to leave his job and go to foreign countries as a yoga teacher.”
(26) Interview with Andrew Ungerleider, telephone, 23 June 23 2011.
(27) A photo of Yogi Bhajan, Indira Ghandi, and Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari at this gathering was reprinted in the December 1972 issue of Beads Of Truth, page 28.
(28) Interview with Rahmaneh Meyers, telephone, 18 August 2011. Meyers was involved with 3HO during its earliest years and was a participant on the 1970-71 trip to India.
(29) The most striking element of Yogi Bhajan’s claimed encounter with Guru Ram Das is how closely it paralleled the story that Maharaj Virsa Singh told of receiving Naam from Baba Sri Chand and Guru Nanak, a story that Yogi Bhajan was doubtlessly aware of and his students almost certainly were not.
(30) Interview with Pamela Dyson, telephone, 23 September 2011. Also known as Premka Kaur Khalsa, Dyson was involved in 3HO from 1969 until 1985 and was the tour secretary for the 1970-71 trip to India. Highly significant in the growth and history of 3HO, Dyson compiled English translations of Sikh sacred writings, wrote numerous articles both for and on behalf of 3HO, and was the editor of Beads of Truth for a dozen years, Secretary General of the Sikh Dharma Brotherhood, Vice President and Director of the 3HO Foundation, and a high-ranking minister, with the title of Mukhia Sardarni Sahib.
(31) Intriguingly, this idea is echoed in the January 1970 issue of Beads of Truth, in which Shakti Parwha Kaur hopes to publish an account of the trip in the next issue and refers to Gobind Sadan as “3HO India.”
(32) Interview with Ron Brent, telephone, 6 January 2011.
(33) Interview with Rahmaneh Meyers, telephone, 18 August 2011.
(34) Interview with Pamela Dyson, telephone, 23 September 2011.
(35) Interview with Antion Vic Briggs, telephone, 5 July 2011.
(36) Later, the blame for the arrest was implicitly laid at the feet of Maharaj Virsa Singh and the debacle was cast as the negative work of “the jealous egos of so-called ‘holy’ men in India (who) created almost insurmountable barriers to Yogi Bhajan’s safe return to America.” See Shakti Parwha Kaur, “Guru Ram Das Ji’s Birthday Celebration,” letter dated September 23, 1971, printed on page 48 in the Autumn 1971 issue of Beads of Truth.
(37) An intriguing possible connection to this event, or perhaps Yogi Bhajan’s initial trip West, can be found in Khushwant Singh’s 2005 collection of obituaries titled Death at My Doorstep, in which he described Yogi Bhajan being confronted at a gathering by the daughter of a man who twenty years earlier loaned Yogi Bhajan Rs. 10,000 “to pay for his air-ticket to Canada… when fleeing from India” (114).

The lesser known history of Yogi Bhajan part 1: Kundalini Yoga is not what he taught

2018-05-042018-08-12 by Amar, posted in Sodarshan Chakra Kriya

Since this blog is dedicated to one specific exercise taught by Yogi Bhajan;
yet nowhere else any of his exercises were taught, it is imperative to research into the history and sources, in order to be clear of the angle where his teachings came from.
In the first 5 minutes of following video scholar Christopher Wallis explains that Kundalini Yoga historically is not at all what Yogi Bhajan (who did claim the term) taught.

This series of articles will send the kundalini yoga practitioner into unkown territory.
For a start: it is explained in this video that Kundalini Yoga is not older then 1400 years.

So here is the first part of his recommended article:

From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric:
The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga Philip Deslippe
which you can read in full here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6r63q6qn

Introduction:
On October 6 , 2004 the man born as Harbhajan Singh Puri and popularly known as Yogi Bhajan died of complications from heart failure at his home in Espanola, New Mexico. The obituary that ran in the New York Times a few days later called him the “’Boss of Worlds Spiritual and Capitalistic,” a fitting title for someone who in the course of three and a half decades had built up numerous large businesses, counted politicians and dignitaries as close friends, and was held as spiritual leader. Despite its size or its many facets, Yogi Bhajan’s legacy and empire was decidedly built upon the practice of Kundalini Yoga. Wherever his students located themselves, as primarily Sikhs, employees of the businesses, healers, yoga teachers, yoga practitioners, or a combination thereof, virtually every single person was introduced to Yogi Bhajan and his Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization (3HO) through the practice of Kundalini Yoga.

Previously untaught to the public and presented as distinct from other forms of hatha yoga being taught, Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga was a vigorous and intense combination of postures or asana, rhythmic movement, chanting, meditation, and intense breathing exercises orpranayama. Within the framework of an ancient, sacred, and [369] previously secret yogic tradition that uniquely claimed ties to Sikhism and its ten human Gurus, Kundalini Yoga offered its practitioners powerful experiences and a lifestyle that went well beyond yoga and meditation to encompass everything from diet and sleep to dress and relationships.(2)(3) If it is difficult to conceive of Yogi Bhajan’s legacy without Kundalini Yoga, then it is just as easy to see how many of its practitioners placed it at the very center of their lives.

A few months after newspapers and wire services ran their obituaries of Yogi Bhajan, Aquarian Times, the official magazine of 3HO, ran an obituary of their own in the form of a tribute issue to honor their spiritual guide. Nestled between the personal memories, tales from 3HO’s early years, and dozens of old photographs, was an article written by Shanti Kaur Khalsa, one of Yogi Bhajan’s senior students, titled “My Teacher’s Teacher”(Khalsa 2005). Crafting a smooth narrative from fragments of Yogi Bhajan’s lectures that had been retold and passed on by his students for decades, Shanti Kaur’s piece told of Yogi Bhajan’s training in Kundalini Yoga from his teacher Sant Hazara Singh. While just a young boy, the privileged and spirited Yogi Bhajan was sent to study under his teacher, a Sikh sant and mystic who had memorized the 1430-page Siri Guru Granth Sahib and was a master of the martial art of Gatka, White Tantric Yoga, and Kundalini Yoga. Sant Hazara Singh was a strict disciplinarian and brutally demanding, often putting his young student through exhaustive trials and yogic training that molded his character. At the age of sixteen, and just before Partition would tear India apart, Sant Hazara Singh declared Yogi Bhajan a master of Kundalini Yoga, ended his own role as his teacher, and told him that the two were never to see each other again.

For students of Yogi Bhajan the history of Sant Hazara Singh is more than a matter of simple genealogy or lineage. Yogi Bhajan taught that that in Kundalini Yoga the link that stretched back to antiquity from student to teacher formed the “Golden Chain.” Every time Kundalini Yoga is practiced, whether privately or in a public class, the mantra “Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo” is intoned three times to “tune in” to this Golden Chain and to be guided and protected by it (Khalsa 1996, 14). Sant Hazara Singh is the only tangible person offered that precedes Yogi Bhajan in the lineage of Kundalini Yoga. The idea of The Golden Chain also helps to bolster the accepted belief in 3HO that Kundalini Yoga was an ancient practice that was forced into secrecy for centuries until Yogi Bhajan taught it openly in the West. The secrecy explains why nothing predating Yogi Bhajan seems to mention the specific details of Kundalini Yoga’s practice in the same context, while The Golden Chain of masters and their students explains how such a practice could be passed down and remain intact until the late-1960s.

But when the Golden Chain of Kundalini Yoga is investigated rather than invoked, it unravels. Within the first two years of 3HO is a hidden and vigorously revised history that stands in stark contrast to the accepted understanding of what Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga is and where it originated. A three-month trip Yogi Bhajan took to India with eighty-four of his students in December 1970 can be seen as the dramatic, demarcating pivot that ended the initial understanding of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga and birthed its current, popularly understood mythology. Instead of a single unaltered lineage, there lies a progression of forgotten and abandoned teachers, figures invented and introduced, and a process of narration and mythologizing born out of cultural context, temporal events, and pragmatic necessity.[370]

The Sant and The Swami

When Yogi Bhajan first began teaching his Kundalini Yoga in Los Angeles, he did not mention Sant Hazara Singh as his teacher and guide, rather he deferred to a Sikh sant named Virsa Singh. Born in present-day Pakistan about eight years after Yogi Bhajan, Virsa Singh moved with his family to the Indian-controlled section of the Punjab during the Partition of 1947. Soon after the move and near the age of ten, the young Virsa Singh became quiet and introspective, detaching from worldly life and meditating for twelve hours a day. He then had a vision of Baba Siri Chand, the son of the Guru Nanak, who appeared to him in physical form. Baba Siri Chand instructed the young Virsa Singh to repeat the Naam of Ek Onkar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru, and later, Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh also appeared to Virsa Singh (Fisher 1992, ch. 20). Virsa Singh became itinerant and miracles and healings were done through him. As the renown of his spiritual power spread he was referred to as “Maharaj.” By the late-1960s, Maharaj Virsa Singh was living in New Delhi at 9 Teen Murti Street, a house given to his student and member of Parliament, Nirlep Kaur, and by 1968 a farm and spiritual center to be known as Gobind Sadan was being constructed on the outskirts of the city, inspired by the models of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh and with the Siri Guru Granth Sahib at its center.

Yogi Bhajan was living in New Delhi at this time, but it was his wife, born Inderjit Kaur Uppal and popularly known today as BibiJi, who was the initial devotee of Maharaj Virsa Singh. A student of Maharaj Virsa Singh was told by Maharaj himself how BibiJi would carry bricks and dirt on her head to help the construction at Gobind Sadan, and before there were buildings on the land, would sleep on the ground after a day of service there.(4) It was BibiJi who told Yogi Bhajan to go to Maharaj Virsa Singh and receive darshan from him (Khalsa 1970b, 2). In time, Yogi Bhajan himself would bring others to Maharaj Virsa Singh, including Major Sahib, the man who gave Gobind Sadan its name (Singh 2010). During his first years in the United States Yogi Bhajan would often repeat a story of how he would visit Maharaj Virsa Singh after he finished his day’s work as a customs officer at Delhi’s Palam airport. Still in his uniform, Yogi Bhajan would dutifully clean the toilets at Gobind Sadan until one day Maharaj Virsa Singh was emotionally touched by his student’s devotion and then physically touched Yogi Bhajan at his third-eye point between his eyebrows, inducing an ecstatic and enlightening state of “cosmic consciousness.” This story was written up, printed, and offered as one of the few pieces of 3HO literature available to students and guests in the early days in Los Angeles.(5)(6)

While there is no secondary confirmation of Yogi Bhajan’s story of being touched on the forehead and becoming enlightened, Maharaj Virsa Singh himself stated that he gave Yogi Bhajan the Naam of Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru in 1968, something that Yogi Bhajan himself recounted in an early lecture he give in Los Angeles and was often repeated within 3HO (Yogi Bhajan 1969; Anonymous 1970a). According to devotees of Maharaj Virsa Singh, theNaam of Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru can be traced back at to Guru Gobind Singh and a Janamsakhi from Bhai Ram Koer, a Sikh from the Court of the Tenth Guru (Singh 2008, 115). Maharaj Virsa Singh would give Naam openly and publically, often to large crowds of people, but at times he would give it directly to individuals. Outwardly, the process of giving Naam is simple: the Master recites the mantra [371] Ek Ong Kar- Sat Nam- Siri Wahe Guru, to the student in three parts, the student repeats each section back to the Master in turn, and the whole mantra is repeated back and forth in this way for three rounds. Inwardly, the giving ofNaam is described as a much deeper and powerful mystical experience. A former student of Yogi Bhajan who went on to study with Maharaj Virsa Singh after Yogi Bhajan’s death, Bhai Himat Singh, described the experience of receiving Naam from Maharaj Virsa Singh as something encompassing blessing and a transmission of spiritual power. Just before Bhai Himat Singh was given Naam, Maharaj Virsa Singh told him, “I am going to give you the same Naam I gave your teacher before he went to America!”(B.H. Singh 2009). It was the chanting of thisNaam of Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru that was at the center of the practice of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yogi during its first two years, and constantly reprinted posters of this mantra would claim that chanting it for two and a half hours a day for forty consecutive days would liberate the practitioner.

Yogi Bhajan also claimed that he was sent to the West by Virsa Singh and that shortly before departing, he was presented with his master’s sandals in a ceremony. In his earliest days in the United States, as a matter of deep respect, Yogi Bhajan would place those sandals on his altar, and a photograph of these sandals was included on a brochure printed to promote a celebration of Maharaj Virsa Singh’s birthday.(7) Warren Stagg, Yogi Bhajan’s second host in Los Angeles after Doctor Amarjit Singh Marwah, remembers that Yogi Bhajan would place sandals on the bed he was given and sleep on the floor.(8) While, again, there is no secondary confirmation of the narrative involving the giving of sandals, the term which Yogi Bhajan repeatedly used to describe Maharaj Virsa Singh was clear: Master (Khalsa 1970a; Yogi Bhajan 1969).

Maharaj Virsa Sing.png

Beyond the term “Master,” there is a wealth of further evidence documenting the relationship Yogi Bhajan claimed with Virsa Singh. A photograph taken by Lisa Law in 1969 of the New Buffalo Commune in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, clearly shows an image of Virsa Singh placed on an altar of one of Yogi Bhajan’s students, above a photograph of Yogi Bhajan and below a poster of the “Code Mantra” of Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru.(9) The 3HO ashram in Tucson, Arizona was named the “Maharaj Virsa Singh Ashram” in honor of Yogi Bhajan’s teacher.(10) One of Yogi Bhajan’s senior teachers during this time, “Baba” Don Conreaux claimed that in helping 3HO’s rapid expansion during its earliest years, he was helping to fulfill “the Hookum (Holy Order) given to him by Yogi Bhajan from Maharaj Ji, to train 108 teachers to open 108 Ashrams” (Khalsa 1970c, 11). The birthday of Maharaj Virsa Singh was celebrated by Yogi Bhajan’s students in February of 1970 as a holiday with a week of around-the-clock chanting of Naam in two-and-a-half hour shifts leading up to the day itself (Khalsa 1970a, 2).

While chanting the Naam of Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru was essential to the students of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga, the physical elements of the practice did not come from Maharaj Virsa Singh, but rather from a Hindu yogi named Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari, five years the elder of Yogi Bhajan. When he was just an adolescent, Dhirendra met his guru, Maharishi Kartikeya, in Bihar and began to study yoga and related subjects under him (Bhramachari 1973, xiii). By the time he was in his forties, Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari was a teacher in his own right and based out of his Vishwayatan Yogashram in New Delhi. In addition to growing acclaim, he counted Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi among his students. It was at this center in the early 1960s where Yogi Bhajan began to study with Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari. The former director of the ashram, Mrs. Vanmala Vachani, described Yogi Bhajan as a frequent visitor to Dhirendra’s classes, but not a very close student or acolyte.(11)

While Swami Dhirendra Bramachari was viewed as a teacher of hatha yoga, the essence of his teaching was Sūkṣma Vyāyāma, described as “a subtle practice aiming at cleansing the nervous- , nadi-, and glandular-systems in order to achieve higher awareness in the body.”(12) It is within the Sūkṣma Vyāyāma and Swami Dhirendra’s unique teachings that the defining physical characteristics of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga can be found.(13) The most significant of the numerous similarities between the two include: the use of the rapid diaphramic breath through the nose known as Bhastrikā Prāṇāyāma (renamed as “Breath of Fire” by Yogi Bhajan) while holding postures, the frequent use of the posture Uttānapādāsana in which the buttocks rest on the floor and the head and feet are raised off the ground (renamed by Yogi Bhajan as “Stretch Pose”), the holding of postures for extended periods of time which Dhirendra would teach “to enter a state of trance and meditation,” and the retention of the breath and the application of internal bodily locks known as bandhas at the conclusion of an exercise or pose.(14)

Dhirendra’s Sūkṣma Vyāyāma was also the source for several of the unusual and numerous rhythmic, callisthenic “back and forth” exercises Yogi Bhajan taught as Kundalini Yoga including: turning the head left and right, rotating the head and neck in circles, extending the arms straight out in front of the body in punching, jerky motions, rotating the arms in circles forward and backwards, standing and stretching the arms up and back while stretching the body backwards and inhaling (renamed by Yogi Bhajan as “Miracle Bend”), alternately kicking the buttocks with the heels of the feet to stimulate the kundalini energy, and squats with the arms extended straight out in front of the body (renamed by Yogi Bhajan as “Crow Squats”).(15)[373]

The influence of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari was not only absorbed through Yogi Bhajan’s time at the Vishwayatan Ashram, it was also taken literally by the book. The two English- language titles of Swami Dhrirendra’s teachings were included in the bibliography of a 2003 book of photographs and poetry dedicated to Yogi Bhajan’s hatha yoga practice and claimed expertise in the late 1960s (Khalsa 2003, 204). In 1975, the 3HO magazine K.R.I. Journal of Science & Consciousness published their special Summer Solstice issue which would later be reprinted as an instructional manual titled Kundalini Yoga for Intermediate Practitioners. Both printings included a section written by Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, a student of Yogi Bhajan and director of the Kundalini Research Institute, titled “The Navel Point” that was a crude and unaccredited reworking of the chapter “Nabhi Cakra” from Dhirendra’s earlier work YogicSūkṣma Vyāyāma. The 3HO publications included a four-part “Navel Adjustment Kriya” that was presumably offered as a Kundalini Yoga exercise, but was taken directly and in the same sequence as Dhirendra’s four-step “Self-Treatment of the Navel” exercises.(16)

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Notes:
(1) Followers of Yogi Bhajan will commonly refer to him by the title “Siri Singh Sahib” as a matter of deference to a title he claims he received in early 1971 at the Golden Temple that made him the Sikh authority of the Western Hemisphere. Critics of Yogi Bhajan will often refer to him by his birth name, Harbhajan Singh Puri, as a way of consciously stripping him of titles they consider fraudulent. He is referred to as “Yogi Bhajan” in this article to primarily reflect the way he was most popularly known and to also stand distinct from both views. The figure of Virsa Singh was referred to as Maharaj in his earlier years and Baba Virsa Singh in his later years. While both “Maharaj” and “Baba” are respectful titles, in this article he will be referred to as Maharaj Virsa Singh, in keeping with references made to him both within 3HO and at Gobind Sadan during the time period focused on. The phrase “Kundalini Yoga” will be capitalized to denote the specific practice that Yogi Bhajan taught and to keep references distinct from other practices that were referred to as kundalini yoga. Finally, the term “3HO” will be used as an umbrella term to encompass the various organizations created by Yogi Bhajan and his followers, since this was the first organization and it, along the variation “3HO Family,” has been used in a similar way within internal literature.
(2) While Kundalini Yoga has simply been described as “ancient” by 3HO for the last several decades, through the 1970s an approximate date of its birth was given by 3HO as 26,000 B.C. See “Yoga: The Origins and Development of Yoga and the Science of Kundalini Yoga as Taught by Yogi Bhajan” by Rama Kirn Singh and Gurucharan Singh Khalsa in Kundalini Quarterly, Summer 1976, 2-8, and a mention of Yogi Bhajan in the November 28, 1970 issue of the Arizona Republic.
(3) Some of the many instances in which Yogi Bhajan asserted that the historical Sikh Gurus practiced the same Kundalini Yoga that he taught include classes on June 10, 1971 and January 12, 1976, and undated Kundalini Yoga exercises such as “Indra Nittra Meditation” and “Ong In Virasan (For Negativity).” In the summer of 1976, an article was written in Kundalini Quarterly by Gurucharan Singh Khalsa and Rama Kirn Singh that claimed that not only did the Sikh Gurus practice Kundalini Yoga, but that very yogic practice predated them and “gave rise to a group of practitioners known as Sikhs.”
(4) Interview with Bhai Himat Singh, telephone, 16 June 2011. Bhai Himat Singh was a practitioner of Kundalini Yoga and a direct student of Yogi Bhajan’s for approximately two decades, beginning in 1983. After Yogi Bhajan’s death, Bhai Himat went to Gobind Sadan where he spent time with Maharaj Virsa Singh and was given Naam by him.
(5) Interview with Ron Brent, telephone, 6 January 2011. Brent was an early student of Yogi Bhajan’s in Los Angeles. In late-1970 he left to become a student of Swami Muktananda and travelled to India to spend time with him. By coincidence he was staying at Gobind Sadan when Yogi Bhajan and his students arrived in late-1970. He not only saw the group at Gobind Sadan, but during that time was one of five people in a small meeting between Yogi Bhajan and Maharaj Virsa Singh, and at Maharaj Virsa Singh’s insistence, had the Punjabi conversation translated into English for his comprehension.
(6) Interview with Antion Vic Briggs, telephone, 5 July 2011. Also known as Vikram Singh Khalsa, Briggs was in 3HO for approximately two decades starting in January of 1970, and was a Mukhia Singh Sahib (or senior minister) within the group.
(7) Interview with Antion Vic Briggs, telephone, 5 July 2011.
(8) Interview with Warren Stagg, telephone, 8 June 2011. In the mid-1960s Stagg owned and operated H.E.L.P. on Third and Fairfax, one of the first health food restaurants in the city, which quickly became a meeting place for New Age people, teachers arriving from the East, and “everyone on a health trip.” Stagg described himself during this time as “the guru greeter of Los Angeles.”
(9) Available to view on the online “Communal Living” exhibit on the website of the Smithsonian: http://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/6.htm#h05
(10) Interview with Andrew Ungerleider, telephone, 23 June 23 2011. Ungerleider began practicing Kundalini Yoga in the fall of 1969 in Arizona and then later in the spring of 1970 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was present on the 1970-71 trip to India and left 3HO in the mid- 1970s after 3HO made its turn towards strict discipline and the reorientation towards Sikhism. (11) Correspondence with Reinhard Gammenthaler, 21 September 2011. Gammenthaler was a close and the final student of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari. His tutelage is described at length in an interview with Schweizer Yoga-Journal from 2003 that is available at http://asianyogaholidays.com/interview-gammenthaler-DB_en.html.
(12) Correspondence with Reinhard Gammenthaler, 21 September 2011
(13) Descriptions of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari’s yogic teachings are based on his two booksthat were translated into English, Sūkṣma Vyāyāma (1973 edition) and Yogāsana Vijñāna (1970edition), and correspondence with his student Reinhard Gammenthaler.
(14) Correspondence with Reinhard Gammenthaler, 23 and 21 September 2011
(15) Parallels to these rhythmic exercises can be found in Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari’sSūkṣma Vyāyāma (1973 edition) as exercises #9, 10, 13, 16, 22, 41, and 43.
(16) Compare images #5-10 from Kundalini Meditation Manual For Intermediate Students with images #105-108 in Sūkṣma Vyāyāma (1973 edition).

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