If you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all.
Pretty challenging teaching, especially in these divided times. But then, Yogi Bhajan didn’t come to the West on a feel-good mission. Instead, his teachings confronted our samskaras and continue to challenge us, offering a yogic vision for life that continues to instruct and inspire. Some revere him as one of the great Kundalini Yoga teachers, but there’s enough there for all of us to benefit.
Harbhajan Singh Puri was born in 1929, in what was then the British colony of India. At the age of eighteen, he experienced the Partition that divided Raj land into two countries, displacing many Muslim and Hindi people who had previously lived in mixed areas. To ensure the safety of his village, he led 7,000 co-religionists on a trek from near Lahore (now Pakistan) to New Delhi (now India). Two years earlier, he had been declared a Kundalini master by his yoga teacher.
In 1968, Yogi Bhajan left India to teach yoga at Toronto University. From there, he moved to Los Angeles and began to teach Kundalini Yoga. At the time, alternative spirituality was often tied into drug use, and Yogi Bhajan wanted to provide an alternative. His ideas proved to be helpful and popular, leading him to found the 3H foundation a year later.
The H’s in 3H stand for Healthy, Happy, and Holy: Yogi Bhajan’s teachings proved to be exactly that. He used yogic philosophy to develop drug rehabilitation and alternative health programs; he also worked to foment ideas about human rights worldwide. Yogi Bhajan also created the International Kundalini Teacher’s Association, a forerunner of groups such as Yoga Alliance. He continued to make public appearances and to teach until his death in 2004.
How should Yogi Bhajan be remembered? As a member of the Sikh religion who worked tirelessly to ameliorate the evil he found on this earth? As a yogi working to share ideals and concepts that he believed would improve such conditions? As one of the popular teachers bringing Eastern wisdom to the Western world during the sixties and seventies? As the founder of the best-known Western Kundalini tradition of yoga? Or, perhaps, as all of these?
It is all too easy to relegate asana to mere physical fitness, and to forget that yoga is a philosophy encompassing body, mind, and soul. We practice movement to keep our bodies healthy so that we can, in the words of Seane Corn, move off the mat and into the world. How do we do that without calling on our teachers for experience, strength, and hope? It is so important to remember that we did not arrive here on our own, and that there is wisdom that can be found in the words of those who have gone before.
Unfortunately, all teachers are falliable. Like so many other “celebrity yogis,” Bhajan has been accused of abusing his followers financially, sexually, and in a myriad of other ways. Today, Kundalini practitioners largely discredit the man and his actions, noting that he is remembered for his “capitalist genius” — not the idea that we usually attach to a yoga teacher — and as someone who was pretty horrible to a significant number of people. His “secret Kundalini practices” have been revealed as a mixture of general yoga and some Sikh beliefs.
How does one see God in such a man?
If you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all.
“Guernica” is one of my favorite paintings, yet I loathe what I read about Picasso as a person. I revere the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both written by slave owners. And I credit some of the best advice to a woman who raised me while battling alcoholism. Sometimes it’s more than separating the person from the teachings; it’s remembering that flawed individuals are still part of the Godhead. Bhajan was in many ways a terrible human being, yet he also contributed to popularizing yoga in the West. It’s amazing that what we now know as Kundalini Yoga grew from such a source. Or is it?
Disclaimer: I am not a Kundalini yoga teacher or student, nor am I affiliated with Seane Corn or Off The Mat, Into the World.
Yoga Cielo Stellato 