- Bhajan Cult by Lapis
18 y
4,196 18 Messages Shown
Blog: Collective Disease Incorporated
Some very interesting information on the contoversial character Yogi Bhajan can be found online for those looking into this man and his group.
The more I read about this man and his "devotees," the more I become increasingly convinced that this man was a master.
Yes, he was a master manipulator that fed off of weak minds...a cult leader.
http://www.rickross.com/groups/3ho.html
"An important issue within the recovery process of many Neo-Eastern groups such as 3HO, is their often excessive use of chanting and meditation. That is, self-induced trance states, which are encouraged, and the way they may subsequently affect brain chemistry.
As a former long-term member (20 years) of 3HO I am very slowly re-evaluating my past personal experiences in trance. That is, sorting through those feelings. Some of those feelings were a familiar byproduct of trance states and were often addictive, in the sense of easing my discomfort and pain and then providing joy and serenity. Such experiences can be both sharp and intense. But they may also eventually become painful. Today I often view such subjective feelings, which can be achieved through meditation, with a certain amount of distrust.
Many former members of 3HO are so damaged that connecting to objective reality and becoming grounded is really quite difficult. My personal experience certainly confirms this problem. Physically I left 3HO years ago, but psychologically and emotionally it took me much longer to really get out. And leaving family members behind in the group further complicated my recovery.
I actually continued my yogic lifestyle even after leaving the group. I would still rise at dawn for a cold shower, do my sadhana ritual, but without the old 3HO mantras. I also remained a strict vegetarian, taught yoga and lived my life much like I did within 3HO.
But then came two important "wake up calls," which helped me enormously. One was connecting with other former members of 3HO through an on-line forum. This helped me to realize that I was not alone and that my feelings and problems were not unique. My second point of increased awareness came through a cult rehabilitation facility called "Wellspring Retreat." I spent time in a recovery program there.
The forum for former members really woke me up to the realization that 3HO could easily be seen as a "cult." Not just a "dysfunctional family," which is what I wanted to believe for so many years. Wellspring Retreat then helped me understand the ways that destructive groups often manipulate and control people, and specifically how that might apply to 3HO. Frankly, I began to see how my time with Yogi Bhajan was not just my own personal experience, but that many people had gone through very similar experiences."
Taken from full article here.
Spirituality comes from within...not without.
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Lapis
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- Prisoner of the Rib Cage and Spiritual Sovereignty?
by 9thbody
18 y
1,655 Reply FCK TinyMCE
- just wondering....
by daizy4
18 y
2,121
if you consider yourself a product of bhajan's type of spirituality....if so, things are making much more sense now....
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daizy4
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- Bhajan seems able to handle ribcages well
by Dreamz
18 y
1,804
Yogi Bhajan’s sex lectures to the men aren’t exactly of the "let's transcend desires and reach nirvana" genre. This is your basic sex manual. "The women has nine highly sensitive areas, which are called ‘moon centers’. There is an order in which these centers need to be touched, using any technique you wish. First, the breasts; then the neck; third the lips; fourth is the cheeks; number five is the ears, a most sensitive moon area. After the ears, remember the spine. Then the thighs are seven; the calves eight; and the clitoris or vagina, nine. If you use any other order, you are an idiot."
And, "There are three different positions of the opening to the vagina: upper, normal and lower. The woman with an upper entry has no problem with orgasms. Because her vagina and her clitoris are so close together, all she needs is a little touch, a little entry, a little doing, and there she goes". Unfortunately says Bhajan, "Out of hundred women, sixty will have lower vaginal entry. The sixty- percent is a problem. Never satisfied, always bitchy, always complaining, always blaming".
In another lecture he asks, "All these yogis and swamis who are celibate don’t marry. Why not? They can’t handle women". Handling women, though, does not appear to be a problem for the fifty-one-year old Bhajan. For the six weeks of his summer camp, Yogi works with them in absence of all other men save a few helpers.
Bhajan’s "handling of women" however, has also become a point of criticism. In the summer of 1977, there were accusations of Yogi Bhajan, a married man with three children, being a womanizer. Colleen Hoskins, who was in the group almost seven years, worked for Bhajan in New Mexico. There, she said, he was served by as many as fourteen women, "some of whom attend his baths, give him group massages and take turns spending the night in his room while his wife slept elsewhere".
She now adds, "I saw women go into his bedroom in their nightgowns, and the next morning they would emerge fully dressed." When she became disillusioned and decided to leave the group, she says Bhajan told her she would be responsible for a nuclear holocaust and that her young daughter would go insane by the time she was fifteen. Bhajan denies these charges and says he does not want to discuss "negativity...The critics didn’t spare Jesus Christ, they didn’t spare Buddha, and they don’t spare me."
Now other charges have come to light. Dr. A.S. Marwah, a Los Angeles dentist, is a respected Indian Sikh who has been living in this country 30 years. He was president for many years, and is still chairman of the board of the Sikh Temple. According to Marwah, when Yogi Bhajan left India, he first went to Toronto Canada. There he called Marwah and told him he wanted to come to the States. Bhajan stayed with Marwah for a month, and Marwah got him a job at the East-West Cultural Center in LA. What Marwah didn’t expect was that ten days later a young lady would arrive from Toronto, pregnant, looking for Bhajan. "This poor girl came to my office", remembers Marwah, "so I called him [Bhajan] and said, ‘ This girl is pregnant and she’s looking for you What happened?’ He admitted it at the time."
Marwah went on a short trip to India and when he returned the head of the center where Bhajan worked was distraught and in tears. According to Marwah, Bhajan was living with six girls in his room. Marwah was on the phone immediately. He relates this conversation between him and Bhajan: "What are you doing The same hanky-panky you did in Canada?", he asked Bhajan. "I’m not doing anything with the girls. They’re just staying with me.", Marwah remembers Bhajan saying. Soon after, Bhajan was fired. Today, however, Bhajan scoffs at Marwah’s accusations. "He’s just made at me because I cannot cater to his ego".
excerpts from here:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho1.html
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Dreamz
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- The Mob-boss style Guru, wow by Dreamz
18 y
1,886
Yogi Bhajan, 75, 'Boss' of Worlds Spiritual and Capitalistic, Dies
NY Times/October 9, 2004
By Douglas Martin
Yogi Bhajan, a former customs inspector at the Delhi airport who became both the spiritual leader to Americans following his version of the ancient Sikh religion and a highly successful entrepreneur, died Wednesday at his home in Española, N.M. He was 75.
The cause was complications from heart failure, Sikh Dharma, his spiritual community, announced.
Yogi Bhajan, whose full name was Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji, introduced an ancient and arduous form of Indian yoga, Kundalini yoga, to Americans. It is more active than the more common Hatha yoga and is practiced by thousands of people across America.
He also introduced Sikhism to this country, but with twists that startled Indian Sikhs. For one thing, yoga is a Hindu practice, not a Sikh one. For another, he insisted that his followers be vegetarians, though Sikhs are renowned as meat eaters.
But he more than retained the Sikh tradition of being superb warriors: he mobilized his followers into a security company that guards federal courthouses and Army bases and takes in more than $1 billion a year.
Others of the 17 businesses he helped create included yoga centers and real estate concerns, as well as his Golden Temple natural foods company, Yogi herbal teas operation, Soothing Touch health and beauty products and Peace natural cereals. One of his nicknames was "the boss," The Miami Herald reported in 1998.
"The whole point of all these ventures is not for an individual to get rich, but to perpetuate the mission of the community," Avtar Hari Singh Khalsa, chief executive of Yogi Bhajan's 3HO Foundation, said in an interview with The New York Times last month.
Mr. Khalsa had previously been a television executive in Hollywood, home to not a few of the guru's disciples. One of them, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, has drawn attention for teaching Kundalini yoga to pregnant celebrities like Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, Melissa Etheridge and Cindy Crawford.
Partly because of his great visibility, Yogi Bhajan inspired critics, including traditional Sikhs; the cult expert Rick A. Ross, who called him an "absolute authoritarian figure"; and people concerned with his sometimes explicit sexua| instructions.
Sikhism originated in the Punjab in the 15th century and preaches the commonality of all religions, the virtue of hard work and a belief in one god. Sikh men in India carry side swords, and so do Yogi Bhajan's disciples, most of whom are Americans not of Indian descent.
Yogi Bhajan met with two popes, two archbishops of Canterbury and the Dalai Lama. In New Mexico, he was important not least as a substantial contributor to both the Democratic and Republican parties; Gov. Bill Richardson ordered flags flown at half-staff in his honor.
Harbhajan Singh Puri was born on Aug. 26, 1929, in the town of Gujrawala in what is now Pakistan. (He legally changed his name when he became a United States citizen in 1976.) The son of a medical doctor, he graduated from Punjab University with an economics degree in 1954, then worked for 15 years as a customs official.
He told The Miami Herald that he had learned Kundalini yoga by having a helicopter lower him into the mouth of a cave in the Himalayas, where he kneeled for three days until the yogi master inside consented to teach him. He later claimed to be the only living master of Tantrism, a sexua| form of yoga that men and woman practice together.
He left India for Canada in 1968 and taught yoga in Toronto. He soon moved to Los Angeles, where he was attracted to youths caught up in psychedelic drugs. He called them "searching souls" and persuaded many of them to substitute meditation for LSD. Later, he set up a more general program to treat drug abusers.
Yogi Bhajan founded Sikh Dharma, his center in New Mexico's Española Valley, in the late 1960's. Time magazine reported in 1977 that he required his disciples to work 12 hours a day on low salaries and skimpy diets. Similar reports appeared elsewhere over the years.
His followers say that his strictures transform their lives in a positive way and that any sacrifices are voluntary.
Yogi Bhajan is survived by his wife, Inderjit Kaur; his sons, Ranbir Singh and Kulbir Singh; his daughter, Kamaljit Kaur; and five grandchildren.
He also left other families behind. He believed he could match couples by sensing the energy surrounding them as well as foreseeing their future. New West magazine in 1980 reported that sometimes in the middle of a lecture, he interrupted himself and declared to a pair of audience members, "Oh, you two people are engaged."
http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho99.html
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Dreamz
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- Another source... by Lapis
18 y
1,753
This is one of many blogs that can be seen on the internet discussing some of the alleged attrocities linked to this self proclaimed guru:
"I have been reading Gurumustik Singh's blog for about 1 month now and am really happy to see such an awesome display of honesty about one’s life and love for Sikhi. His family is beautiful and loving, and I wish one day to have the same comforts and ability to practice Sikhi as freely as they do and with the support structure they clearly seem to possess from their sungat. One thing however that I feel someone needs to bring up is the issue of Yogi Bhagin. The more I read and the more I see, it really appears that he had a great impact on these Sikhs inspiration for Sikhi and their love and they highly respect him for that fact. Sometimes I feel as though the illusion is ok since it has done so much positive regardless of the true nature of the man, however no matter how much good a person does, does that make his foes disappear? One thing that bothers me being a female, is that often men in power who have access to impressionable women tend to, when corrupt take advantage of innocent sincere interest expressed due to their overbearing charismatic personality or influence or persuasiveness over the innocent persons i.e. women. Yogi Bhajan was not exempt to this action of imposing himself; when he had no right to, as he was in a role of religious leadership and guidance oriented position. I am sure the 3ho community is not oblivious to the fact he had 2 reported rape cases against him, and has been known to have extramarital relationships with some of the Sikh converts he inspired. He even reportedly at one point had women who were called "secretaries" sleep in the same room as him, up to 12 women at one time; which reminds me of a king's harem in the 16th century middle east. This to me does not seem appropriate, does it to you? One thing that infuriates me is that he could do this, that he had that much power to manipulate these women into things so rotten, so disgusting, so against our precious TRUE GURU - Siri Guru Granth Sahib, makes me sick to my stomach. How can a man who had done such awful things feel he has the right to be called SIRI SINGH SAHIB - WHAT EGO!!! This is just not good, whatever you may feel right or wrong is, I believe a man that extends his sexuality against women when he is in a religious role is wrong, and on top of that claims he is a pious married religiously devoted man and "leader" of a religious group. I personally think that he didn't bring all the Sikhs in the west to Sikhi it was Hukam, the Strong hand of Waheguru that brought you all to the path of Sikhism. He was just a character in the play that was ultimately your fate to find Siri Guru Granth Sahib and Waheguru. In addition I do understand for the panth that it is good to have a good reputation and so forth for the greater world not to see Sikhs in a bad light, but the cover-up that followed to hide what Yogi Bhajan did by other leaders of the Sikh faith was immoral and unethical. If a man has a history of sexua| assault or molestation, or sexua| manipulation he should be stripped of all titles and directed where he can obtain help. The leaders who gave Yogi Bhajan the money to pay off the women who had accused him of such acts should honestly be ashamed of themselves. I know many western Sikhs have a true allegiance to Yogi Bhajan, hence the title of SIRI SINGH SAHIB placed at the beginning of his name, however being a Sikh woman of Siri GURU GOBIND SINGH and WAHEGURU I can never bring myself to call him that because my true Guru is Waheguru, and no one measures up to title of Siri Singh Sahib in the worldly world, history has proven this. God knows what is in every man’s heart."
May God bless you all,
ChardeeKhalaaa,
Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa
Waheguru Ji Ke Fateh!
http://www.mrsikhnet.com/2005/07/arjan-chatting-with-friends-at-party.html
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Lapis
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- Another Ex Member Speaks by Lapis
18 y
1,604
- some wise words taken from a message/ i will find link by Dreamz
18 y
1,843
Do yoga if you wish,
but please learn where the yoga ends
and mindless devotion & religious fanaticism begins.
And please, if you want to know the secret to life,
the first thing you must have--is a life.
And it must be your own,
not someone else's idea of what it should be.
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Dreamz
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- Trouble in the Cult by Lapis
18 y
1,715
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CureZone