Yogi Bhajan, 75; Sikh Leader Taught Kundalini Yoga

Yogi Bhajan, a Sikh spiritual leader who pioneered the teaching of Kundalini yoga in the United States, starting in Los Angeles, has died. He was 75.

Bhajan, who also expanded the Sikh community’s membership from Indians with roots in Punjab to include Europeans and Americans, died Wednesday at his home in Espanola, N.M. The cause of death was complications after heart failure, according to Daya Singh Khalsa, a longtime friend.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson ordered that flags in the state be flown at half-staff for two days after the death.

“Yogi Bhajan made a tremendous impact on the state of New Mexico as a religious, business and political leader,” Richardson said in a statement Thursday.

A well-known community activist and an entrepreneur in the state, Bhajan met Richardson in the 1980s, and they discovered a common interest in government. As a young man in India, Bhajan had worked for the Internal Revenue Service and later was named head of the customs office at what is now Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi.

He was a lifetime practitioner of yoga and considered a master of Kundalini, which combines vigorous physical poses with meditation and mantras.

In 1968, Bhajan moved from India to Toronto and soon afterward to Los Angeles, where he taught Kundalini yoga at a furniture store in West Hollywood after business hours and at the YMCA in Alhambra. As his reputation grew, he was invited to teach at local colleges.

He established the 3HO Foundation -- the happy, healthy, holy organization -- in 1969. The program emphasizes yoga, meditation and community service and is taught in the U.S. as well as India.

In Los Angeles, Bhajan also attended interfaith forums and conferences to help establish a Sikh presence. Over time, he became known as an authority for the Sikh religion in the Western Hemisphere. He had an inclusive view of the world’s major religions and considered all of them valid. His business card read, “If you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all.”

After moving to Espanola from Los Angeles in the early 1970s, Bhajan founded the Sikh Dharma community, which has grown to about 500 families, most of them American converts.

He was also instrumental in creating several successful businesses owned by Sikh Dharma members. One of them, Akal Security, is among the country’s largest suppliers of security officers to government sites, including federal court buildings, Army bases and airports.

Such work is in keeping with the Sikh tradition of the warrior saint, said Khalsa, a founder of Akal. A number of early Sikh leaders were military generals who preached self-defense and opposed military aggression, he said.

Sikhism began in northern India in the 15th century and claims 18 million members worldwide. About 250,000 reside in the United States, with an estimated 100,000 on the West Coast, according to Gurinder Singh Mann, professor of Sikh studies at UC Santa Barbara.

“Yogi Bhajan has a special place in Sikh history,” Mann said Friday. “For the first time in the religion’s five centuries, we have non-Punjabi members. He also took an interest in proselytizing.... That is quite a departure. Sikhs are of a non-proselytizing tradition.”

Born Harbhajan Singh Puri in a part of India now in Pakistan, the yogi was the son of a medical doctor. Bhajan’s family moved to New Delhi when India was partitioned to create Pakistan in 1947, and he graduated from Punjab University with a degree in economics.

In 1952, he married Inderjit Kaur, who survives him, as do two sons, a daughter and five grandchildren.