(b. Harbhajan Singh Puri, 1927) Modern
Hindu missionary and founder of the
3HO/Sikh Dharma Brotherhood. He
first came to the United States in 1969,
leaving behind his position as a customs
official at the Delhi airport. His initial
teachings were the traditional disciplines of hatha yoga and kundalini
yoga, with his followers organized into a
group known as the “Happy, Healthy,
Holy Organization” (3HO). Hatha yoga is
a system of religious discipline (yoga)
based on a series of bodily postures
known as asanas; this practice is widely
believed to provide various physical
benefits, including increased bodily
flexibility and the ability to heal chronic
ailments. Kundalini yoga is a religious
discipline, the primary focus of which is
awakening the kundalini, the latent
spiritual force that exists in every person
in the subtle body. The kundalini is
awakened through a combination of
yoga practice and ritual action and is
believed to bring further spiritual capacities and ultimately final liberation
(moksha) of the soul.
These two disciplines remain an
important part of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings, for he claims to be a master of
tantra, a secret, ritually based religious
practice, but in the 1970s his teaching
widened to include traditional Sikh
teachings and symbols. The most
prominent of these symbols are the “five
Ks” that all Sikhs are supposed to wear,
so called because each of them begins
with the letter k: uncut hair (kesh), a
comb (kangha), a bangle on the right
wrist (kara), shorts (kacch), and a ceremonial sword (kirpan). Many of Yogi
Bhajan’s followers keep the Sikh symbols
far more strictly than most people born
as Sikhs, but the movement has two
important divergences with the traditional Sikh community. One of these is
its emphasis on tantra, which has little
importance in the Sikh community. The
most significant difference, however, is
the religious authority that Yogi Bhajan
holds over his followers, which is very
different from the decentralized, essentially democratic form of the traditional
Sikh community.