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A principle in life to remember is to travel light.
You are traveling all the time.
Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.
– Yogi Bhajan
Memories about Yogi Bhajan
Memoirs by Shakti Parwha Kaur Khalsa
I'd never seen anyone like him, over 6' 2", wearing white checkered trousers, a short sleeved shirt, black velvet shoes with turned up toes, a pink turban, and not a hint of gray in his jet black beard. At 39 he was strikingly handsome. Snapping photos with a little instamatic camera, observing every detail with his luminous brown eyes. He spoke with elegance and grace, the most polite man I'd ever met.
He gave his first public lecture in the United States on January 5, 1969. I had already met him two weeks earlier, in December 1968, when he visited the East West Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
I was definitely not looking for a teacher, and had no interest in yoga. Certainly didn't know anything about Kundalini Yoga. However, after he had told me (unsolicited) that my son was in trouble (definitely true!), and that he could help me, and having started chanting EK ONG KAR SAT NAM SIRI WAHE GURU at his suggestion, every morning for one hour before dawn, while praying for my son (it worked!), I felt I wanted to help this man in any way I could.
Unknown in this country, virtually penniless when he arrived (coming from Canada, where he'd arrived from India in September), he had only intended to spend the weekend in L.A. However, upon meeting a number of young "flower children" he realized he must stay and give them a REAL experience of the God within, and provide them with guidelines for living in a way that would enable them to fulfill the destiny for which they were born. He made that oft quoted statement, "I haven't come to get students, but to train teachers."
We sat on my living room floor looking through the Yellow Pages for a YMCA where Yogi Bhajan could teach classes. A few phone calls later, an appointment was set with the Alhambra YMCA. The deal was that the Y would collect $1.50 from each student and give half to the Yogi.
In the beginning he would teach private classes as well. My first class consisted of lying in Corpse Pose doing long deep breathing for 45 minutes - during which he left the room! It was an amazing experience, I've never been the same since!
As you can see from the photos in KUNDALINI POSTURES and POETRY that were taken just before he left India, Yogi Bhajan could do all those pretzel things, but when he taught classes, he rarely ever demonstrated the postures. He would describe them, tell us what to do, and then walk around and sometimes adjust us. That was it. (Once I remember trying to do wheel pose, and he came tried to help me lift my back off the floor. It was hopeless.) He would tell stories to make us laugh, others to illustrate courage, valor, humility, inspiring us with tales of the Sikh Gurus, seriously reminding us of the purpose of life, and then make us laugh again.
Too many longhaired hippies started piling in by Volkswagen busses to learn from this Yogi, and get high from Kundalini yoga. It was too much for the woman who owned the Center, and Yogi Bhajan was asked to leave. In fact, she withdrew her offer to sponsor him for U.S. citizenship. That morning he asked me to pray, and told me by the end of the day, with Guru's grace, he would find a new sponsor. Sure enough, Johnny Rivers, the rock star, volunteered to be his sponsor.
One of the students, Jules Buccieri owned an antique furniture shop at Melrose and Robertson. He offered his showroom as a classroom. Every night at 6 PM the kids would take all the furniture out onto the parking lot and then after the class put it back in. Soon they decided to remodel the garage into a permanent classroom. Someone brought a gong. And at the end of every class, Yogiji would play the gong and we would sail into the bliss.
(Some of us snored, especially me!) There were usually about 80 students in every class. Then he started teaching mornings as well, at 10:30.
Sharon Cook brought her 18 month old daughter, set her up in a playpen, and that's when Siri Simran Kaur (Mrs. Dr. Alan Singh Weiss, mother of 7 year old Nanak Nihal Singh) began learning Kundalini Yoga.
The Hollywood crowd got wind of this phenomenal yogi, and soon some started showing up with their P.A. (personal assistant) to spread out their sheepskins. They disappeared rapidly after Yogi Bhajan extolled the virtues of garlic, and suggested that everyone eat several cloves per day. (During this time he started traveling and teaching. While he was away, I taught his evening classes. I made the mistake of telling everyone to "Exhale powerfully." I nearly fell off the teacher's bench.)
You may wonder why people so readily took Yogi Bhajan's teachings to heart, why they were willing to follow his directions, to serve him, to change their lives, become vegetarians, stop drinking and smoking… Remember, it was literally the dawning of the Aquarian Age, and the souls who were drawn to this spiritual teacher simply recognized him as a real messenger of the Truth they had been seeking. And, most of all he gave everyone unconditional love. He's been aptly called the "Father of the Woodstock Nation."
Sitting one afternoon on the sofa in my apartment on Westgate, Yogi Bhajan suddenly closed his eyes, and seemed to go into deep meditation. A couple of minutes passed and then the phone rang. It was Tom Law, his student-teacher, calling from Woodstock to get help, because someone had laced the drinking water with LSD.
I was privileged to spend many hours with the spiritual giant known as Yogi Bhajan (later known as the Siri Singh Sahib), listening to him counsel people, driving him to his classes, seeing him always serving, always giving, inspiring and challenging everyone to excel. In any and every circumstance he was, and still is, above all, a Teacher. It was many years later that he shared with us "The Oath of a Kundalini Yoga Teacher" that he himself has always lived by: "I'm not a woman, I'm not a man, I'm not a person, I'm not myself, I'm a Teacher."
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