White Tantra courses in Europe in 2024

My Request to inform participants about the dark history of this practice.

by Els Coenen

Communication related to

White Tantric events organized in Europe in 2024.

Mail below was sent on January 20, 2024,

by Els Coenen (#UnderTheYogaMat)

to info@kundaliniyogafestival.nl, the Stichting Kundalini Yoga Festival Nederland in Hoofddorp, Nederland,

and copied to other organizers of White Tantra events in Europe in 2024.

Mail Subject:

Regarding your White Tantra event in 2024: are your (potential) participants correctly informed?

Mail Body:

Dear organizers of 2024 White Tantric Events in Europe,

I invite you to read the following message addressed to the Dutch organizer of the White Tantra event on February 10, 2024. Since I do not know your languages, I cannot verify whether the claims I make about missing information to the Dutch organizers also apply to you. Anyway, the main message and the main request I have for all of you is the same: Please inform the people who want to register for your events about the true history of Yogi Bhajan’s White Tantra. They have the right to know, right?

List of 2024 White Tantra events in Europe (info taken from www.whitetantricyoga.com)

• Feb 10, 2024, in Rosmalen, Netherlands –organized by Kundalini Yoga Festival Nederland
• Feb 17, 2024, in Stockholm, Sweden – organized by Vit Tantrisk Yoga Sverige
• Mar 16, 2024, in Madrid, Spain – organized by AEKY – The Spanish Association of Kundalini Yoga
• Apr 14, 2024, in Rome, Italy – organized by the International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association IKYTA Italy
• Aug 7 – 9, 2024, in Jambeville, France – organized by 3HO Europe at the European Yoga Festival
• Oct 19, 2024, in Darmstadt, Germany – organized by Weisses Tantra Yoga

Dear leaders of the Stichting Kundalini Yoga Festival Nederland,

On February 10, 2024, you are organizing a White Tantric Yoga event in Mariakapel Rosmalen in the Netherlands. On your website there is no warning or information for the participants about the dark history of this practice and its inventor. This is irresponsible conduct. People have the right to know that White Tantra was one of the techniques used by child abuser and serial rapist Yogi Bhajan to control, abuse, and exploit his followers.

You know your customers will ‘someday’ discover the truth. So why not sooner than later? The recent lawsuit filed in Superior Court in California, Los Angeles, against nine entities related to Yogi Bhajan (including the Healthy Happy Holy Organisation 3HO, the Kundalini Research Institute KRI, Sikh Dharma International SDI, Yogi Tea and others), will cause a fuss that will cross the ocean. Your clients will feel betrayed if you haven’t informed them in advance, don’t you think?

Once you know, you cannot unknow. And now, ‘you know’, don’t you? Therefore, is it not your responsibility to share information about Yogi Bhajan’s abuses and his lies? About his self-conceived practices that are NOT ancient as you call them in your announcement, but invented by Bhajan to manipulate and exploit? History has proven that they are NOT uplifting but put people into a blissful trance that predisposes them to undue influence and mind control.

I read that the sessions will be ‘led by Yogi Bhajan, projected on a video screen’. This is how it has been done since he died in 2004. Everything is the same. It is as if the massive revelations of abuse and misconduct sparked by Pamela Dyson’s book Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan in the early 2020s never happened. THAT, dear White Tantra organizer(s), is an INSULT to the hundreds of brave survivors who went through the painful process of recounting, and thus reliving, their horrific traumatic experiences that ruined their lives and remained hidden for fifty years.

It seems you have decided to ignore what is known today and are willfully projecting the voice of this master manipulator over the heads of people who will be blinded by his numbing White Tantra meditations. It is irresponsible to do so without warning them of the damage this charismatic but evil man, with his powerful and misleading voice, has inflicted on many followers and their children, before and after he brought his 3HO-crowd into these ‘high places’. You know this because you write: Although you may be a little disoriented by the end of the day, the experience is well worth it.

It is difficult for outsiders to understand how and why you are still doing this in 2024. These teachings made 3HO members who lived close to Bhajan blind to the abuses and crimes taking place before their eyes. For decades, hundreds of individuals suffered immensely, unable to speak because they would be slandered, threatened with death, or excommunicated from their ‘beloved 3HO family’. The Healthy, Happy, Holy community did not support them. It was decades of hell for many. How can you continue to call this ‘a path to greater personal freedom and consciousness’?

Isn’t the fact that Bhajan was able to make misogynic statements in front of hundreds of women that should have revolted them, but left them in complete silence, proof enough that there is something wrong with these teachings? For example, when he shouted: ‘Rape is always invited’, or ‘Women like to be beaten up and enjoy sex after that’. The audience remained silent. Isn’t this enough evidence that these practices have a negative impact on people’s logical and critical mindset? Isn’t this enough evidence that they were in a state of ‘bounded choice’, as Dr. Jajna Lalich calls the state induced by cult leaders? Do you really want to continue the practices that have blinded so many and even charge big amounts for it (195 euro for one day)?

If people who informed themselves about the damage done by Yogi Bhajan and the true origin of his White Tantric Yoga still want to practice this nonsense that makes them feel high, that’s fine by me. But how many of your participants are fully informed? Only a few, we know, right? The Kundalini Yoga Europe community is still in a coma as to the extent and impact of the harm done.

Have you read Under the Yoga Mat: The Dark History of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga? GuruNischan, host of the Uncomfortable Conversations Podcast and I published it in July 2023 to educate people. Proceeds from this book go to nonprofit initiatives that support recovery from sexual violence, child neglect, and institutional abuse, so this is not a commercial appeal. Feel free to refer your students/clients to Under the Yoga Mat. It’s a good place to start because it gives an overview of the situation and has many references to resources you can consult. Or point them to www.abuse-in-kundalini-yoga.com where excerpts from interviews with survivors and links to media, books and reports can be found.

One source that exposes the TRUTH about Bhajan’s WHITE TANTRA is the book Sikhism and Tantric Yoga: A Critical Evaluation of Yogi Bhajan’s Tantric Yoga in the Light of Mystical Experiences and Doctrines written by Sikh historian Dr. Trilochan Singh in 1977. He wrote it during a trip through the US after Yogi Bhajan came to see him. Dr. Trilochan had questioned Bhajan about his teachings. Many (former) 3HO members had approached the historian with their stories which made him realize what a fraud Bhajan was.

Dr.Trilochan Singh, well known in academia for his knowledge on Sikh history, philosophy, and comparative studies of religions, wrote: ‘Yogi Bhajan is a Sikh by birth, a Mafia Tantric by choice but without training, … His disciples beautifully dressed in Classical Sikh style, a thing charming and courageous by itself, and not easy for those who do it in this country [VS], are indoctrinated by utterly absurd doctrines of Tantra and hearsay mantras of Sikhism … he [is] unable to interpret even two pages of Adi Guru Granth [holy book of the Sikhs], he has been feeding them with mumbo-jumbo sermons, which do not make any sense … his abhorrent knowledge of Sikhism which would even make a high school student from the Punjab burst into laughter. The sincerity of his followers is so deep and profound that even for their sake one would hesitate to criticize 3HO; but their ignorance and misguided faith may lead to a situation when they too may fall away disillusioned and disgusted with his false doctrines and blame Sikhism and Sikh savants for warning them and saving them … I admire him for many of his qualities which make him distinguished and lovable like a famous Circus Clown … I have always paid the price of isolating historical truths from political campaigns of self-interest of the few. I will do it again. Even fifty years from now this book will have a meaning and significance of its own.’ (from Dr. Trilochan Singhs book Sikhism and Tantric Yoga – p 20-25)

Dear leaders of the Stichting Kundalini Yoga Festival Nederland, his last sentence was prophetic. This Sikh historian warned us almost 50 years ago. Do not continue to live in these lies, or worse, share them without adding a warning sign. Have the courage to open your eyes to the truth that is irrevocably revealing itself since the early 2020s.

My message to you and to all trainers and teachers of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan: take responsibility and inform your students. If you do, it will NOT negatively impact your yoga business. Your clients will appreciate openness, transparency, truth, and honesty. This is 2024!!!

How can you inform yourself and others?

As mentioned earlier, reading Under the Yoga Mat is a good start. Visit www.abuse-in-kundalini-yoga.com. Follow the links you find there to listen to the survivors’ stories in the many podcasts available; read Premka and other books out there; read An Olive Branch’s report on the sexual abuse and of Dr. Alexandra Stein on child abuse who tells about bugs in their food, the caning, the abuse, the loneliness; watch the Vice documentaries Yogi Bhajan: Yoga’s Biggest Predator and Inside the ‘Abusive’ World of Yoga Guru Yogi Bhajan; read about the terrible experiences of survivors who participated in the Independent Healing and Reparations Program that ended last year. And so on … and so on …

It takes courage, but please embrace the change now: Allow your clients to decide for themselves in an informed way whether they want to participate in these White Tantric events knowing that they were a tool developed and used by a cult leader. Give them information about the dark side of the history of this White Tantric Yoga practice or show them the way. This way you can really be of service to them.

Thank you for listening,

Warmly,

Els Coenen