Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji (born as Harbhajan Singh Puri)[1] (August 26, 1929–October 6, 2004), also known as Yogi Bhajan and Siri Singh Sahib, was a charismatic spiritual leader and successful entrepreneur who introduced Kundalini Yoga and Sikhism to the USA.[2] He was the spiritual director of the 3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) Foundation, which today is one of the world's largest yoga-teaching bodies, and an outspoken defender of the holistic doctrine of Sikh Religion.
Youth and schooling
Harbhajan Singh was born on August 26, 1929 into a Sikh family in Kot Harkarn, district Gujranwala, in the province of Punjab (British India). His father, Dr. Kartar Singh Puri, served the British Raj as a medical doctor. His mother was named Harkrishan Kaur. Theirs was a well-to-do landlord family, owning most of their village in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Most influential of Harbhajan Singh's relations in his early development was his paternal grandfather, Bhai Fateh Singh. Fateh Singh taught him the essence of Sikh teachings and instilled in him a respect for all religions and an awe of the silent mysteries of life. As a teen, Harbhajan Singh spent several years under the strict tutelage of Sant Hazara Singh who declared his student a Master of Kundalini Yoga at the young age of sixteen.
Harbhajan Singh's schooling was interrupted in 1947 by the violent partition of India, when he and his family fled to New Delhi as refugees. There, Harbhajan Singh attended Camp College – a hastily put together arrangement for thousands of refugee students – and organized the Sikh Students Federation in Delhi. Four years later, he graduated with a Masters Degree in Economics.[3]
[edit] Indian Civil Service
In 1953, Harbhajan Singh Puri entered the Indian Civil Service. He also married Inderjit Kaur in that year. They were soon to have three children, Ranbir, Kulvir and daughter Kamaljit.
Harbhajan Singh served in the Revenue Department, where his duties took him all over India. Eventually, he was promoted to the post of customs inspector for the country's largest airport, outside of Delhi.[3]
[edit] Yogic study in India
Throughout his life, Harbhajan Singh continued his practice and pursuit of yogic knowledge. His government duties often facilitated his traveling to remote ashrams and distant hermitages in order to seek out reclusive yogis and swamis. Sometimes Yogi Bhajan would find them to appraise their worth, for India always had a surfeit of supposed "holy men." At other times, he would sincerely go to learn the specialized knowledge possessed by this or that sadhu.
In the mid-1960s, Harbhajan Singh took up a position as instructor at the Vishwayatan Ashram in New Delhi, under Dhirendra Brahmachari. This yoga centre was frequented by the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter, Indira Gandhi, and diplomats and employees from a host of foreign embassies.[4]
[edit] Migration to North America
Harbhajan Singh emigrated to Canada in 1968. According to his own account, he left India under pressure to participate in Soviet psychic experiments at their designated research center in Tashkent.[5]
Although a promised university position as director of a yogic studies department did not materialize because of the death of his sponsor, Harbhajan Singh the Yogi made a considerable impact in the predominantly Anglo-Saxon metropolis. In three months, he established classes at several YMCAs, co-founded a yoga centre, was interviewed for national press and television, and helped set in motion the creation of eastern Canada's first Sikh temple in time for Guru Nanak's five hundredth birthday the following year.
Late in 1968, bearded and turbaned Yogi Bhajan went to visit a friend in Los Angeles, but ended up staying to share the teachings of Kundalini Yoga with the already longhaired members of the hippie counterculture of California and New Mexico. In effect, he had found his calling.[6]
[edit] Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan
Yoga practice and philosophy is generally considered a part of Hindu culture, but Yogi Bhajan distinguished himself as a teacher and practitioner of the yoga of the Sikh gurus. This development would prove difficult to accept for many Sikhs who assumed yoga to be an unSikh practice leading to eventual absorption in the sea of pan-Hinduism.
While it proved somewhat controversial in some circles of Sikhism, Yogi Bhajan was adhering to the fundamental, empowering roots of Sikh teachings. He would often quote Bhai Gurdas to say, “The Sikhs who are Yogis remain detached and wakeful in the world of attachments.” (Var 29, Verse 15)
While adhering to the three pillars of Patanjali's traditional yoga system: discipline, self-awareness and self-dedication, Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan does not condone extremes of asceticism or renunciation. Yogi Bhajan encouraged his students to marry, establish businesses, and be fully engaged in society. Rather than worshiping God, Yogi Bhajan insisted that his students train their mind to experience God.[7]
Yogi Bhajan became known as a master of Kundalini Yoga, but it was actually Raj Yoga, the yoga of living detached, yet fully engaged in the world that typified his life and teachings.
[edit] Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization
Main article: 3HO
In 1969, Yogi Bhajan established the 3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) Foundation to further his missionary work. It served his premise that every human possessed the birthright to be healthy, happy and holy. It was only a matter of unlearning one set of habits and replacing it with a kinder, more uplifting routine.[8]
For some of the free-spirited hippies, the Yogi Bhajan's discipline was more than they could take. Others, however, took to it almost naturally. Most of them were already longhaired. Many were already vegetarian. They liked to experience elevated states of awareness. They also deeply wanted to feel they were contributing to a world of peace and social justice. Yogi Bhajan offered them all these things with vigorous yoga, an embracing holistic vision, and a spirit of sublime destiny.[9]
By 1972, there would be over one hundred 3HO yoga ashrams mostly in the U.S., but also in Canada, Europe and Israel. Student-teachers would rise each day for a cold shower and two-and-a-half hours of yoga and meditation before sunrise. Often, they would spend the rest of the day at some "family business" be it a natural foods restaurant, or a landscaping business, or some other concern. A Sikh was supposed to earn honestly "by the sweat of their brow" and many did just that.[10]
By the 1990s, there was a culture shift. On a personal level, rising early and overtly being a Sikh was considered more of an option than an implied directive. Meanwhile, the surviving communal businesses had incorporated and many had grown exponentially to keep pace with the rising demand for health-oriented products and services. This period also saw an increased interest in yoga worldwide. [11]
To serve the changing times, Yogi Bhajan created the International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association, dedicated to setting standards for teachers and the propagation of the teachings.[12]
In 1994, the 3HO Foundation joined the United Nations as a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, representing women's issues, promoting human rights, and providing education about alternative systems of medicine.[12]
[edit] Aquarian age timeline
In spring of 1969, soon after Yogi Bhajan had begun teaching in Los Angeles, a hit medley "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" was topping the music charts and being played everywhere. The performers, The 5th Dimension, happened to be signed to a record label owned by one of his students (and his green card sponsor), musician and entrepreneur Johnny Rivers.[13]
Yogi Bhajan incorporated the storyline of the dawning new age into his teachings, a case of melding Western astrology with Sikh tradition. "Guru Nanak," proclaimed Yogi Bhajan, "was the Guru for the Aquarian Age." It was, he declared, to be an age where people first experienced God, then believed, rather than the old way of believing and then being liberated by one's faith.[14]
The timeline for the arrival of the Aquarian age varied over the years, but in 1992, Yogi Bhajan fixed it at 2012 and gave his students a set of morning meditations to practice until that date to prepare themselves.[15]
[edit] Aboriginal connections
Some of Yogi Bhajan's earliest students in Los Angeles had spent time in New Mexico influenced by aboriginal, especially Hopi teachings. To fulfill their wishes, Yogi Bhajan accompanied them in June 1969 to their summer solstice celebration at the Tesuque Indian reservation outside of Santa Fe.[16]
At the next year's celebration, a delegation of Hopi Indian elders arrived. They spoke of their ancient legend that before the end of the present age of darkness, a white-clad warrior would come from the East and create an army of warriors in white who would rise up and protect the "Unified Supreme Spirit." A sweat lodge ceremony was held and a sacred arrow given in trust to Yogi Bhajan. The elders explained that they had determined he was the white-clad warrior of their legend.
Seven years later, Yogi Bhajan purchased a large parcel of land in the Jemez Mountains where the Hopis had indicated sacred gatherings had taken place for thousands of years. The elders had said this land needed to be prepared so "the Unified Supreme Spirit can once again be experienced by the great tribes and spread through all the people of the world." The land was named "Ram Das Puri" and annual solstice prayers and festivities celebrated there every summer since. Since 1990, these have included a Hopi sacred prayer walk.[17]
[edit] Pilgrimage to Amritsar
For Yogi Bhajan, the greatest test of his teaching came in the winter of 1970-71, when he brought an entourage of eighty-four Americans on a pilgrimage to Amritsar in India. It was a hard, grueling trip. The Punjabi Sikhs had never seen Westerners in turbans before. At first, they were suspicious.
For their part, once Yogi Bhajan's students had overcome their hardships, they felt a real kinship with Sikh culture and embraced it. Twenty-six of them took vows to join the Order of Khalsa as full-fledged Sikhs.
The Sikh administration in the holy city of Amritsar was in a turmoil. Once they understood that the devotion of the Westerners was genuine, they reflected on the best way to honor Yogi Bhajan for his most unexpected harvest.
On March 3, 1971, outside the traditional seat of Sikh temporal authority Akal Takhat, Sant Fateh Singh and Sant Chanan Singh bestowed on Harbhajan Singh a ceremonial sword and a robe of honor and a unique designation. They had reasoned that Yogi Harbhajan Singh had indeed created "Singh Sahibs" (noble lions), and to continue in his work he would need a higher designation. For this reason, they gave Yogi Bhajan the unprecedented title of "great, noble lion": Siri Singh Sahib.[18]
[edit] Inter-faith work
In the summer of 1970, Yogi Bhajan participated in an informal "Holy Man Jam" at the University of Colorado at Boulder with Swami Satchidananda, Steven Gaskin of The Farm in Tennessee, Zen Buddhist Bill Quan-roshi, and other local luminaries. A few weeks later, Yogi Bhajan carried that inspiration forward and organized a gathering of spiritual teachers to engage and inspire the 200,000 attendees of the Atlanta Pop Festival on the stage between the performance of the bands.[19]
These seminal events served to awaken interest in inter-faith discussion such as had not been seen since the 1920s. In 1972, Yogi Bhajan participated in religious panels at Harvard University, Cornell University, Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That same year, Yogi Bhajan visited Pope Paul VI and advised him to convene a gathering of friendship and understanding for representatives of all religions. He reminded Paul VI that catholic meant "universal" and suggested that, as head of the world's largest religious organization, he would be the most suitable leader to host such a meeting.[20]
Yogi Bhajan maintained his relationship with the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II. In 1983 and again in 1984, they met. When the Golden Temple came under assault from the Indian Army with the loss of life of many hundreds of pilgrims, the pontiff offered his official condolences.[21]
During the United Nations Year of Peace 1986, Yogi Bhajan instituted a yearly Peace Prayer Day for people of all denominations at the Summer Solstice near Santa Fe.[22]
In that same year, Pope John Paul II convened a gathering of religious representatives of the world such as Yogi Bhajan had proposed fourteen years earlier. Unable to travel to Italy for the event, Yogi Bhajan participated in a ceremony held the same day in Los Angeles.[23]
All though the 1970s and 80s, Yogi Bhajan actively engaged in and chaired numerous inter-religious councils and forums, including the Inter-Religious Council of Southern California, the World Conference for the Unity of Man, and the World Parliament of Religions.[24] In 1999, he was gave a major presentation at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Cape Town, South Africa. [25]
[edit] Gender relations
Yogi Bhajan, the son of a graceful mother, was deeply shocked and offended by the exploitation of women in America. In 1971, he taught a gathering of his female students that they were the "Grace of God." Thus began the Grace of God Movement for the Women of America. Strip clubs in Hollywood were briefly picketed, but Yogi Bhajan's real emphasis was on re-educating America's largest exploited class.
This work began in earnest in the summer of 1975, when Yogi Bhajan held an eight week camp in New Mexico where he taught the psychology of a successful woman. Successive camps included subjects including martial arts, rappelling, fire arms training and healing arts to build the character and confidence of the women in training, which is why the camps were designated "Khalsa Women Training Camps."[26]
Although Yogi Bhajan did teach a few weekend courses for men, his emphasis was on women because he recognized in them the foundation of any society, and he wanted to fundamentally end the disempowerment of Western women and the destruction of families. In his words: "God lives in a cozy home."
While encouraging his female students to practice natural childbirth and to breast-feed, practices which were not widely adhered to in the early 1970s, Yogi Bhajan also revived the ancient Indian custom of celebrating the arrival of the new soul at the one hundred twentieth day of pregnancy. This laid emphasis on the dignity and divinity of motherhood. By adhering to this historic custom, Yogi Bhajan also encouraged his women students in family planning. (In Catholic tradition, which is very significant to this issue in the West, the belief that pregnancy actually begins at the quickening, around the fourth month, is pre-Pius IX.) They should only to embark on motherhood if they were fully prepared to accept the responsibilities – and if they were not, then to terminate a pregnancy before the second trimester was far preferable (and certainly not a sin) to bringing a soul into ungraceful circumstances.
Yogi Bhajan also encouraged mothers to swaddle their infants and families to sleep all together, another traditional practice, although he afterwards stated that he lost nearly a third of his students over this one teaching.[27]
As far as homosexuality was concerned, Yogi Bhajan at first was shocked by the phenomenon. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, Yogi Bhajan taught that the condition could be cured through intensive yoga and self-analysis. By the late 1980s, however, Yogi Bhajan resigned himself to the conclusion that "sometimes God goofs" and puts men into women's bodies and vice versa.[28]
[edit] Sikh rights in North America
Yogi Bhajan played a pivotal role in having the right of practicing Sikhs to keep their distinctive turbans recognized in the United States and Canada. When, in 1973, 3 men serving in the U.S. Armed Forces took up the Sikh faith, they faced harsh discipline by those in the army and navy unaware of Sikh traditions. Yogi Bhajan arranged for religious authorities in Amritsar to take notice of their cases, which caused the U.S. Armed Forces to change its policy in regards to the keeping of beards and wearing of turbans, so as to accommodate Sikhs in the service.[29]
This development led to a similar case launched by a student of Yogi Bhajan in 1977, a test challenge involving the Canadian Armed Forces. The Canadian Human Rights Commission decided the case in favour of the Sikhs.[30] A number of subsequent cases in Canada led to widespread acceptance of the wearing of turbans in a number of uniformed services, including municipal transit companies and police forces, most notably the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where Baltej Singh Dhillon became the first turbanned member of the national police force in 1990.
[edit] During the 1980s Sikh Holocaust
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Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s personal assault on the Sikh minority in India took advantage of their splintered leadership. Since many Sikhs and their political organization, the Akali Dal, had vocally opposed her draconian rule during the Indian Emergency (1975-1977), it was to be expected that the formidable Mrs. Gandhi would retaliate once returned to office in 1980. That year, Yogi Bhajan sent registered letters to two hundred members of the Sikh leadership, warning them of terrible consequences if they did not unite, which they did not.
When the peaceful campaign of civil disobedience waged by Sikh activists to address longstanding grievances with India's central government turned violent, Yogi Bhajan advised the leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to call it off and resume another day, which he did not.
Several times in the early 1980s during the Punjab insurgency, Yogi Bhajan went and tried to mediate peace between the members of Indira Gandhi's government and the Sikh leadership in Punjab, which he was uniquely positioned to do. He knew them all, but his efforts were in vain.[31]
When the wholesale assault on the lives and human rights of Sikhs in India took place in earnest in June 1984, with the attack on the Golden Temple complex and the destruction of the Akal Takhat, Yogi Bhajan uniquely advised that the Akal Takhat had martyred itself to awaken the Sikh nation.[32]
While urging Sikhs in the West not to lose hope or descend into wanton violence, Yogi Bhajan attempted to organize relief supplies for victims and still to conciliate the opposing sides, which both included Sikhs. He especially encouraged the Sikh President, Zail Singh, not to resign in protest at the sacrilege committed by the Prime Minister, for this he believed would only further isolate the minority Sikhs and lead down a widening spiral of blame and bloodshed.
As the international media and human rights observers were kept out of Punjab, indiscriminate arrests, tortures and killings by the police left an estimated 10,000 civilians dead, and hundreds more of the visible minority Sikhs disappeared or detained without charges or trial. This period of holocaust beginning in 1984, extended to the mid-1990s and beyond.[33] Despite rising calls for the creation of a separatist Sikh homeland, Yogi Bhajan continued throughout the crisis to press for justice, forgiveness and reconciliation.[34]
[edit] Work for nuclear disarmament
Beginning in 1982, with the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. launched on an expensive, risky and seemingly endless arms race, Yogi Bhajan began to join other civil leaders in demanding mutual nuclear disarmament.
Yogi Bhajan's efforts took the form of his speaking at a number of disarmament rallies and his mobilization of his students, encouraging them to talk to their friends and relatives about the dangers of nuclear war.[35]
Shortly after Yogi Bhajan began his activism again the U.S. government's defense policy, the special Sikh exemption which allowed Sikh males to serve wearing their distinctive turbans and beards was disallowed.[36]
[edit] Sikh unity
Even as he ventured out of familiar territory, expanding the reach of Sikh teachings and calling reprobates to task, Yogi Bhajan also kept an eye on Sikh unity. While some in Punjab criticized his efforts – particularly his administrative titles, structures and symbols - as heterodox, others toured the domain and offered their generous approval. This happened once in 1974 when the delegation of Gurcharan Singh Tohra, President of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Mahinder Singh Giani, Secretary of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Sardar Hukam Singh, President of the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Shatabdhi Committee, and Surjit Singh Barnala, General Secretary of the Akali Dal, came.[37]
In 1979, the official Professor of Sikhism, Dr. Kapur Singh, came from Amritsar and addressed the Khalsa Council, Yogi Bhajan's governing council, and assured them they remained well within the fold of Sikh tradition.[38]
In 1986, as the Khalistan movement (Sikh separatist movement within India) exerted an increasingly divisive role in the Sikh community, Yogi Bhajan appointed Bhai Sahib Bhai Jiwan Singh of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha as Jathedar (Secretary) of Sikh Unity.
Although he was instrumental in creating a new culture of Sikhs in the Western Hemisphere – Gursikh yogis speaking English, Spanish, German and Italian – Yogi Bhajan did not appreciate artificial divisions dividing Sikhs from one another, whether they be based on caste, race, nationality or any other grounds. He valued Sikh unity and always considered himself a Sikh first and last. This was ably and aptly reflected in the new media of Sikhnet.com which today serves Sikhs around the globe. It was begun by students of Yogi Bhajan while the internet was still in its infancy – and has since grown to be the biggest, multi-layered Sikh resource in cyberspace.[39]
[edit] Political influence in U.S.
Yogi Bhajan was not in the least naïve about the importance of being politically connected if one wanted to succeed in the United States and did not shy from political functions. While he opposed the Reagan government’s regime of high debt and high unemployment, Yogi Bhajan appreciated a strong foreign policy and especially U.S. efforts to dislodge the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.
As early as 1970, Yogi Bhajan was known to call on members of Congress in their Washington offices. He also befriended successive governors of the state of New Mexico. Basically, Yogi Bhajan was known as a Democrat. Since 1980, he was both friend and advisor to Bill Richardson, who served variously as New Mexico governor (2002-present), U.S. Energy Secretary (1998-2001), U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1997-98), and member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1982-97). Bill Richardson was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination to run for the office of U.S. President in 2008.[40]
[edit] Healing arts
When U.S. President Nixon called drugs America's "Number one domestic problem," Yogi Bhajan launched a pilot program with two longtime heroin addicts in Washington, D.C. in 1972. [41] The next year, a full-blown drug treatment center known as "3HO SuperHealth" was launched in Tucson, Arizona. The program used Kundalini Yoga, diet and massage therapy to cure the addicts. It distinguished itself in 1978 as being among the top 10% of all treatment programs throughout the United States, with a recovery rate of 91%.[42]
Early on, when the term "stress" was still practically unheard of, Yogi Bhajan warned his students about a tidal wave of insanity that would soon engulf modern industrialized societies.[43] As a remedy, Yogi Bhajan taught hundreds of techniques of yogic exericise and meditation. Many have been catalogued by their traditionally known effects in calming and healing the mind and body. Some of those techniques have been scientifically studied and applied in clinical practice with favorable results.[44]
One of the most noteworthy successes has been achieved by Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., whose holistic treatment of Alzheimers disease using yoga with other therapeutic modalities has been lauded by the U.S. Surgeon General.[45]
[edit] Business success
Yogi Bhajan encouraged his students to go into business and served as a trusted advisor to a number of successful enterprises. The best known of these are the Yogi Tea Company which packages and markets his tea formulas, Golden Temple Bakery which specializes in natural cereal products, the Soothing Touch health and beauty care products company, Akal Security and the Yoga West Center in Los Angeles.[46]
Ten percent of the profits of Peace Cereals go to the annual Peace Prayer Day, held at Ram Das Puri, near Santa Fe, New Mexico.[47]
[edit] Miri Piri Academy
In 1998, Yogi Bhajan founded the Miri Piri Academy at a short distance outside of Amritsar, India. The distinctive boarding school offers studies in a regular curriculum, plus Sikh studies and a daily regimen of yoga, meditation and service. Currently, students of seventeen nationalities are enrolled.[48]
[edit] Death
Yogi Bhajan died of complications of heart failure at his home in Española, New Mexico, on October 6, 2004, aged 75. He was survived by his wife, Inderjit Kaur; his sons, Ranbir Singh and Kulbir Singh; his daughter, Kamaljit Kaur; and five grandchildren.[2]
[edit] Honors
As well as his title "Siri Singh Sahib" awarded to him at the holy Akal Takhat in Amritsar in 1971, Yogi Bhajan was also designated "Bhai Sahib" in 1974.[49]
The Peace Abbey of Sherborn, Massachusetts awarded Yogi Bhajan the Courage of Conscience award on November 17, 1995.[50]
In 1999, at the three hundedth anniversary of the founding of the Order of Khalsa in Anandpur Sahib, India, Yogi Bhajan was awarded another rare honorific, the title "Panth Rattan" – Jewel of the Sikh nation.[51]
At his passing, Yogi Bhajan joined a select few – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, and Pope John Paul II – in having members of the U.S. Congress pass a bipartisan resolution honoring his life and work.[52]
In April 2005, New Mexico Highway 106 was renamed the Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway.[53]
[edit] Publications
* Yogi Bhajan, The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan, Pomona/Berkeley, Arcline Publications, 1977.
* Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji (Yogi Bhajan), Furmaan Khalsa: Poems to Live By, Columbus, Ohio, Furman Khalsa Publishing Company, 1987.
* Yogi Bhajan with Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, The Mind: Its Projections and Multiple Facets, Espanola, New Mexico, Kundalini Research Institute, 1997.
* Yogi Bhajan, The Game of Love, A Book of Consciousness: The Poems and Art of Yogi Bhajan, Sikh Dharma, 2007.
[edit] Personal life
Yogi Bhajan was married in Delhi to Bibi Inderjit Kaur in 1954. They were blessed with three children, Ranbir Singh, Kulbir Singh and Kamaljit Kaur. Kamaljit Kaur married Bhai Sahib Satpal Singh Khalsa in 1978, who is the Ambassador of Sikh Dharma, Chairman Guru Ram Das Mission, Secretary International Affairs, Akal Takht and Honorary International Representative for SGPC.
