The "Perfect Worm"
A PsychoSocial Assessment
May 18, 2021
Sat Nam. I name this phenomenon in recognition of the concept of the perfect storm. Like that rare and uniquely destructive force of nature, the perfect worm also exists from a confluence of favoring factors. Unlike the storm, its destructive work occurs within, gnawing invisibly at the integrity and viability of the host. It is a social and psychological phenomenon.
The case in this study involves the spread of allegations against spiritual teacher Yogi Bhajan (1929-2004), beginning in early 2020, coinciding with the publication of a book by a disaffected student. That former student of the Master then expertly tapped into grievances, traumas and resentments in 2nd and 3rd generation members of the 3HO community, founded in the late 1960s. Within weeks, the administration of the international 3HO community had, on legal advice, commissioned an outside organization to conduct an inquiry into the allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse by Yogi Bhajan. In August, that outside organization published its report, basically confirming those allegations. By September, the organization was officially disowning the Master’s legacy, removing his pictures and references wherever they might occur.
Without dwelling here on the qualifications of those who conducted the inquiry or on details of its methodology and presentation, which a subsequent report found to be substantively lacking, dishonest, even illegal, we will examine here the social and psychological dynamics that fed the remarkable about face in an organization and a community that only a year and a half ago appeared to be devoted to both the legacy and the personal story of its founding father.
Pre-existing Conditions - From the passing of Yogi Bhajan in 2004 to the end of 2019, the 3HO community and administration largely preserved the integrity and sanctity of the memory of the great teacher who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West. Pam Dyson’s ill-fated lawsuit in 1987 was history. She had disowned her claims ten years later. Rumours of sexual abuse did circulate in parts of Germany and Holland where they coincided with a real sex scandal involving teacher trainer Karta Singh in France, but they did not circulate outside of that region. Philip Deslippe’s 2012 thesis, offering a different history of the transmission of Kundalin Yoga, was the first assault on the Yogi Bhajan legacy, but he did not touch on sexual allegations. Disaffected students Gursant Singh and Kamala Rose Kaur did maintain a steady online onslaught of all kinds of allegations, easy to ignore and easy to access.
From within the organization, there were three striking phenomena:
1) One was a number of law cases. Some emanated from Yogi Bhajan’s wife claiming that she and her children were deprived of their rightful share of his estate. Others took on board members appointed by Yogi Bhajan who attempted to personally cash in on the collective assets of the profitable parts of the organization.
2) Another phenomenon of note was that while Yogi Bhajan’s wife did publish a biography of her husband in Punjabi the year after his passing and while a large unofficial biography was in the works, the organization never saw fit to honour its founder with an official biography or any other gesture to keep alive his memory. The elephant in the room here is that Yogi Bhajan did not appoint a successor. There is no second Siri Singh Sahib.
3) Lastly, within the community, there was ongoing discussion of the observed trend in the Kundalini Research Institute, the teaching organization, to package the teachings of the Master and sell them piecemeal, increasingly disassociated from the integrative “healthy, happy, holy” and demonstrably Sikh concept of its originator.
Less noticeable to the casual eye was an aging administration suffering an unhealthy disconnect to younger members of the community. Important positions were all taken up by 3HO-lifers, mostly in their seventies. Some of those under 50, say in the token “youth section” of Khalsa Council, chafed at their insignificance in the legacy organizations.
Related to the issue of generational disconnect, was the general ineffectiveness of the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation Board and its affiliated boards and committees. Members of the board, who were typically overstretched with long hours of meetings coping with short-term emergencies, were ill-equipped to deal with what would turn out to be an existential crisis for the organization and community. Moreover, the centralization of power and authority among three or four people, combined with the opaque nature of decision-making and the influence of outside lawyers, made the situation ripe for tricky business.
As the organization managed day to day, the #MeToo movement and "woke" ideology were affecting minds and attitudes in America and beyond. Given the strong feminist currents in Yogi Bhajan's mission and the dynamic of Kundalini Yoga, considered a journey of personal awakening, of which the Siri Singh Sahib was a Master, one might not ordinarily have expected any negative outcomes from these recent external developments, but these were not to be ordinary times.
While none of these factors could be seen as egregious or fatal to the organization in isolation, combined together, they contributed to the perfect worm, a destabilizing and disintegrative movement that caught everyone by surprise in the months of 2020 and thereafter.
Peer Pressure - Pam Dyson, the disaffected author, tapped into a number of individuals, roughly 30 to 45 years of age, who up to that time felt unheard and largely undervalued. Fueling their resentment with her story of unrequited love, abuse and escape from the 3HO “cult,” she validated their narrative and set them loose like sparks in a field of dry grass. Dominant members of this group felt that at last they had a purpose and a mission in the 3HO community. Their message was feminine positive, masculine negative, youth positive, elder negative, generally dismissive of the 3HO culture and often hateful of Yogi Bhajan. Over time, that message spread from the more dominant members to the fringes. It would be difficult for a person in the 3HO community within this age group to exist without expressing fealty to the mission of defrocking Yogi Bhajan and pulling down much of what he stood for.
Pressure within the Family - Many of these daughters, feeling empowered and with an ally, considered important based on her one-time status in the organization and her new media celebrity, went home and set upon their mothers. While details varied with individuals and families concerned, a general narrative was that these women shamed their mothers for being “different,” for being a “failure,” for submitting to a “mindless cult” and its “abusive leader.” Many expressed their resentment at having to be different from their non-3HO friends and being deprived of a “normal life.”
Mothers could not be unaffected. As much as they owed to Yogi Bhajan who had helped many of them turn their lives around and guided them through successful marriage and family life, he was no longer physically present and their daughters were. It was their precious relationship with their daughters they feared to lose and not that with their teacher, now 16 years past.
Where the mothers turned with their daughters, the husbands, wanting peace and harmony in the home, almost without exception, also turned on the legacy of Yogi Bhajan, or at least went along without saying much.
Dynamics for the Sexually Traumatized - While generally about 30% or North American women experience serious sexual trauma, it may be expected that the percentage of women in the 3HO community to have had traumatic sexual experiences to be more and not less than that average. From early in its history, 3HO has been an oasis for women, promising them respect, family values and a bond of spiritual sisterhood. Of course, sexual trauma is known by virtually all women to some degree and, even in the “healthy, happy, holy” culture of 3HO, healing from that trauma also varies considerably.
When faced with the allegations of sexual abuse by Yogi Bhajan, 3HO community members, like anyone else, have two basic options: they may agree with those accusations or they may disagree. For a person who has themself experienced sexual trauma, this dynamic is especially charged.
a) Assenting to the allegations:
i) creates comradry between the alleger and their respondent;
ii) creates a shared sense of victimhood;
iii) creates a shared sense of mission;
iv) involves shared emotions, likely of anger, grief, shame;
v) is a feminist declaration.
b) Not agreeing with the allegations:
i) leaves one vulnerable to animosity from the alleger;
ii) leaves one vulnerable to being accused of being a “rape enabler;”
iii) leaves one vulnerable to being accused of having blind faith in
one’s teacher, who after all “is human;”
iv) if the respondent is male, they are liable to be accused of being blind to the historic afflictions committed by their gender;
v) if the respondent is male, they become vulnerable to having any sexual indiscretions of their own exposed by the alleger as a
form of proof of collusion. “All men are like this,” they will say.
For anyone carrying a burden of unresolved sexual trauma, the confrontation involved with not agreeing with the allegations is liable to trigger old emotions connected with one’s own experience of victimization. Even for someone not carrying a load of trauma, unless one has exceptional feelings of gratitude and loyalty toward the Master, it is clearly much easier to go along with the accusations than to take a stand against them.
Magazines and Newspapers - A number of media who picked up on and published stories about the unfolding dynamics gave momentum and the perception of credibility to the allegations. The stories engaged in four popular tropes: 1) women as victims of sexual violence;
2) a powerful, abusive male figure;
3) an abusive cult;
4) the corrupting power of religion.
Social Media - Facebook accelerated the move to disintegration by providing a place for “haters” to gather, share news, gossip, and strategize. People who joined the Facebook group inspired by Pam Dyson found validation and an echo chamber effect for their allegations. One significant activity in the group was the identification of individuals who had not expressed their support of the allegations against Yogi Bhajan. Once identified, these people could be targeted in a number of ways – blame, shame, ostracization – to push them into the anti-Yogi Bhajan camp.
While the anti-Yogi Bhajan Facebook page was typically three to four times more populous than the most popular pro-Yogi Bhajan page, this group seemed to include many people with only a passing knowledge of Yogi Bhajan. Whether they themselves had experienced sexual trauma or not, they seemed to join with the purpose of supporting women in their struggle for social justice and an end to their abuse by men, a worthwhile cause in itself.
Petitions - One marker of feelings generated by the movement to discredit Yogi Bhajan was the launching of a petition to keep Yogi Bhajan’s name associated with his teachings. Launched in April of 2020, the petition gathered 3,740 signatures internationally. A counter petition launched soon after managed just 270 signers. Initiatives like these served as targets for both camps as the issues and dynamics came into focus.
Other Responses - While people in charge of the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation clumsily offered a way forward by hiring a team specialized in compassionate reconciliation to heal the damage they themselves had done, others outside the corporation offered novel and independent responses. These included:
12 recorded webinars where teachers of Kundalini Yoga from five continents, and others who had been with Yogi Bhajan in since his early days in Los Angeles, shared their faith in the teachings and the teacher.
As members of the Siri Singh Sahib Board resigned in dismay, some family members campaigned to take their places on the board, others registered to vote and many voted in the election held last December.
A daily gathering centered on live chanting at 7:30pm Atlanta time was started late in 2020.
The publication of the Thompson Report on December 31, 2020 was a crucial development. Finally there was a professional report and a realistic perspective on the fake investigation paid for by the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation.
A website sprang up to celebrate and share lectures, letters, and stories of the Master.
Teachers loyal to the Siri Singh Sahib joined forces online and offline to preserve the integrity of the teachings of Yogi Bhajan as taught by the Master.
A motion to create deputies in the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation at least 20 years younger than or no more than 40 years of age, for office-holders such as Secretary-General, Bhai Sahib(a) and head of KRI, was submitted to the SSSC Board.
Summary - In just 16 months, our 3HO family has moved from a state of complacent, low-level malaise to a state of war with itself and its legacy. It may be argued that the catastrophe as we know it happened in just a few weeks. It all took place in the time between the publication of Pam Dyson’s book and the decision of the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation Board’s “Collaborative Response Team” to appoint a biased and unprofessional team to launch an investigation based on “credible allegations of abuse” by the man for whom the corporation is named. Once that investigation was announced, things moved with the quickness of a grass fire.
In this study, we examined preexisting conditions that contributed to the present crisis. We looked at the role peer pressure played in enforcing conformity to the new anti-Yogi Bhajan narrative and how that dynamic was brought into play by Pam Dyson. Family pressures, especially, daughters to mothers and wives to husbands, were assessed. The volatile and easily triggered dynamics of those carrying unresolved sexual trauma were examined in some detail, considering how under these circumstances it is much easier to agree to the allegations than to oppose them. Every publication of an article by magazines and newspapers, online and off, added momentum to this debacle. Social media, Facebook in particular, played its usual role as a powerful aggregator and multiplier of like-minded individuals on both sides. Online petitions, pro and con, provided a voice for thousands outside the administration to express their passion for or against the legacy of the Master. Other responses ranged from recorded webinars, participation in SSSC Board elections, daily online meditations, the commissioning of a professional report, new websites, online Sangat and a motion to encourage the involvement of younger people in the higher offices of the organization.
As there are no obvious signs of abatement on either side, it is difficult to foresee an outcome. While some pray for unity and others for renewal, still others are at work with axe and hammer to destroy the edifice of the Siri Singh Sahib. Old bonds of community are being challenged, sometimes destroyed, while new bonds and new conversations are arising out of the old. In this highly charged atmosphere, transference and acting out abounds, while the quiet knell of meditation too is in evidence. The perfect worm, humble augur of transformation, offers no perfect solution.
Sat Nam. I name this phenomenon in recognition of the concept of the perfect storm. Like that rare and uniquely destructive force of nature, the perfect worm also exists from a confluence of favoring factors. Unlike the storm, its destructive work occurs within, gnawing invisibly at the integrity and viability of the host. It is a social and psychological phenomenon.
The case in this study involves the spread of allegations against spiritual teacher Yogi Bhajan (1929-2004), beginning in early 2020, coinciding with the publication of a book by a disaffected student. That former student of the Master then expertly tapped into grievances, traumas and resentments in 2nd and 3rd generation members of the 3HO community, founded in the late 1960s. Within weeks, the administration of the international 3HO community had, on legal advice, commissioned an outside organization to conduct an inquiry into the allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse by Yogi Bhajan. In August, that outside organization published its report, basically confirming those allegations. By September, the organization was officially disowning the Master’s legacy, removing his pictures and references wherever they might occur.
Without dwelling here on the qualifications of those who conducted the inquiry or on details of its methodology and presentation, which a subsequent report found to be substantively lacking, dishonest, even illegal, we will examine here the social and psychological dynamics that fed the remarkable about face in an organization and a community that only a year and a half ago appeared to be devoted to both the legacy and the personal story of its founding father.
Pre-existing Conditions - From the passing of Yogi Bhajan in 2004 to the end of 2019, the 3HO community and administration largely preserved the integrity and sanctity of the memory of the great teacher who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West. Pam Dyson’s ill-fated lawsuit in 1987 was history. She had disowned her claims ten years later. Rumours of sexual abuse did circulate in parts of Germany and Holland where they coincided with a real sex scandal involving teacher trainer Karta Singh in France, but they did not circulate outside of that region. Philip Deslippe’s 2012 thesis, offering a different history of the transmission of Kundalin Yoga, was the first assault on the Yogi Bhajan legacy, but he did not touch on sexual allegations. Disaffected students Gursant Singh and Kamala Rose Kaur did maintain a steady online onslaught of all kinds of allegations, easy to ignore and easy to access.
From within the organization, there were three striking phenomena:
1) One was a number of law cases. Some emanated from Yogi Bhajan’s wife claiming that she and her children were deprived of their rightful share of his estate. Others took on board members appointed by Yogi Bhajan who attempted to personally cash in on the collective assets of the profitable parts of the organization.
2) Another phenomenon of note was that while Yogi Bhajan’s wife did publish a biography of her husband in Punjabi the year after his passing and while a large unofficial biography was in the works, the organization never saw fit to honour its founder with an official biography or any other gesture to keep alive his memory. The elephant in the room here is that Yogi Bhajan did not appoint a successor. There is no second Siri Singh Sahib.
3) Lastly, within the community, there was ongoing discussion of the observed trend in the Kundalini Research Institute, the teaching organization, to package the teachings of the Master and sell them piecemeal, increasingly disassociated from the integrative “healthy, happy, holy” and demonstrably Sikh concept of its originator.
Less noticeable to the casual eye was an aging administration suffering an unhealthy disconnect to younger members of the community. Important positions were all taken up by 3HO-lifers, mostly in their seventies. Some of those under 50, say in the token “youth section” of Khalsa Council, chafed at their insignificance in the legacy organizations.
Related to the issue of generational disconnect, was the general ineffectiveness of the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation Board and its affiliated boards and committees. Members of the board, who were typically overstretched with long hours of meetings coping with short-term emergencies, were ill-equipped to deal with what would turn out to be an existential crisis for the organization and community. Moreover, the centralization of power and authority among three or four people, combined with the opaque nature of decision-making and the influence of outside lawyers, made the situation ripe for tricky business.
As the organization managed day to day, the #MeToo movement and "woke" ideology were affecting minds and attitudes in America and beyond. Given the strong feminist currents in Yogi Bhajan's mission and the dynamic of Kundalini Yoga, considered a journey of personal awakening, of which the Siri Singh Sahib was a Master, one might not ordinarily have expected any negative outcomes from these recent external developments, but these were not to be ordinary times.
While none of these factors could be seen as egregious or fatal to the organization in isolation, combined together, they contributed to the perfect worm, a destabilizing and disintegrative movement that caught everyone by surprise in the months of 2020 and thereafter.
Peer Pressure - Pam Dyson, the disaffected author, tapped into a number of individuals, roughly 30 to 45 years of age, who up to that time felt unheard and largely undervalued. Fueling their resentment with her story of unrequited love, abuse and escape from the 3HO “cult,” she validated their narrative and set them loose like sparks in a field of dry grass. Dominant members of this group felt that at last they had a purpose and a mission in the 3HO community. Their message was feminine positive, masculine negative, youth positive, elder negative, generally dismissive of the 3HO culture and often hateful of Yogi Bhajan. Over time, that message spread from the more dominant members to the fringes. It would be difficult for a person in the 3HO community within this age group to exist without expressing fealty to the mission of defrocking Yogi Bhajan and pulling down much of what he stood for.
Pressure within the Family - Many of these daughters, feeling empowered and with an ally, considered important based on her one-time status in the organization and her new media celebrity, went home and set upon their mothers. While details varied with individuals and families concerned, a general narrative was that these women shamed their mothers for being “different,” for being a “failure,” for submitting to a “mindless cult” and its “abusive leader.” Many expressed their resentment at having to be different from their non-3HO friends and being deprived of a “normal life.”
Mothers could not be unaffected. As much as they owed to Yogi Bhajan who had helped many of them turn their lives around and guided them through successful marriage and family life, he was no longer physically present and their daughters were. It was their precious relationship with their daughters they feared to lose and not that with their teacher, now 16 years past.
Where the mothers turned with their daughters, the husbands, wanting peace and harmony in the home, almost without exception, also turned on the legacy of Yogi Bhajan, or at least went along without saying much.
Dynamics for the Sexually Traumatized - While generally about 30% or North American women experience serious sexual trauma, it may be expected that the percentage of women in the 3HO community to have had traumatic sexual experiences to be more and not less than that average. From early in its history, 3HO has been an oasis for women, promising them respect, family values and a bond of spiritual sisterhood. Of course, sexual trauma is known by virtually all women to some degree and, even in the “healthy, happy, holy” culture of 3HO, healing from that trauma also varies considerably.
When faced with the allegations of sexual abuse by Yogi Bhajan, 3HO community members, like anyone else, have two basic options: they may agree with those accusations or they may disagree. For a person who has themself experienced sexual trauma, this dynamic is especially charged.
a) Assenting to the allegations:
i) creates comradry between the alleger and their respondent;
ii) creates a shared sense of victimhood;
iii) creates a shared sense of mission;
iv) involves shared emotions, likely of anger, grief, shame;
v) is a feminist declaration.
b) Not agreeing with the allegations:
i) leaves one vulnerable to animosity from the alleger;
ii) leaves one vulnerable to being accused of being a “rape enabler;”
iii) leaves one vulnerable to being accused of having blind faith in
one’s teacher, who after all “is human;”
iv) if the respondent is male, they are liable to be accused of being blind to the historic afflictions committed by their gender;
v) if the respondent is male, they become vulnerable to having any sexual indiscretions of their own exposed by the alleger as a
form of proof of collusion. “All men are like this,” they will say.
For anyone carrying a burden of unresolved sexual trauma, the confrontation involved with not agreeing with the allegations is liable to trigger old emotions connected with one’s own experience of victimization. Even for someone not carrying a load of trauma, unless one has exceptional feelings of gratitude and loyalty toward the Master, it is clearly much easier to go along with the accusations than to take a stand against them.
Magazines and Newspapers - A number of media who picked up on and published stories about the unfolding dynamics gave momentum and the perception of credibility to the allegations. The stories engaged in four popular tropes: 1) women as victims of sexual violence;
2) a powerful, abusive male figure;
3) an abusive cult;
4) the corrupting power of religion.
Social Media - Facebook accelerated the move to disintegration by providing a place for “haters” to gather, share news, gossip, and strategize. People who joined the Facebook group inspired by Pam Dyson found validation and an echo chamber effect for their allegations. One significant activity in the group was the identification of individuals who had not expressed their support of the allegations against Yogi Bhajan. Once identified, these people could be targeted in a number of ways – blame, shame, ostracization – to push them into the anti-Yogi Bhajan camp.
While the anti-Yogi Bhajan Facebook page was typically three to four times more populous than the most popular pro-Yogi Bhajan page, this group seemed to include many people with only a passing knowledge of Yogi Bhajan. Whether they themselves had experienced sexual trauma or not, they seemed to join with the purpose of supporting women in their struggle for social justice and an end to their abuse by men, a worthwhile cause in itself.
Petitions - One marker of feelings generated by the movement to discredit Yogi Bhajan was the launching of a petition to keep Yogi Bhajan’s name associated with his teachings. Launched in April of 2020, the petition gathered 3,740 signatures internationally. A counter petition launched soon after managed just 270 signers. Initiatives like these served as targets for both camps as the issues and dynamics came into focus.
Other Responses - While people in charge of the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation clumsily offered a way forward by hiring a team specialized in compassionate reconciliation to heal the damage they themselves had done, others outside the corporation offered novel and independent responses. These included:
12 recorded webinars where teachers of Kundalini Yoga from five continents, and others who had been with Yogi Bhajan in since his early days in Los Angeles, shared their faith in the teachings and the teacher.
As members of the Siri Singh Sahib Board resigned in dismay, some family members campaigned to take their places on the board, others registered to vote and many voted in the election held last December.
A daily gathering centered on live chanting at 7:30pm Atlanta time was started late in 2020.
The publication of the Thompson Report on December 31, 2020 was a crucial development. Finally there was a professional report and a realistic perspective on the fake investigation paid for by the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation.
A website sprang up to celebrate and share lectures, letters, and stories of the Master.
Teachers loyal to the Siri Singh Sahib joined forces online and offline to preserve the integrity of the teachings of Yogi Bhajan as taught by the Master.
A motion to create deputies in the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation at least 20 years younger than or no more than 40 years of age, for office-holders such as Secretary-General, Bhai Sahib(a) and head of KRI, was submitted to the SSSC Board.
Summary - In just 16 months, our 3HO family has moved from a state of complacent, low-level malaise to a state of war with itself and its legacy. It may be argued that the catastrophe as we know it happened in just a few weeks. It all took place in the time between the publication of Pam Dyson’s book and the decision of the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation Board’s “Collaborative Response Team” to appoint a biased and unprofessional team to launch an investigation based on “credible allegations of abuse” by the man for whom the corporation is named. Once that investigation was announced, things moved with the quickness of a grass fire.
In this study, we examined preexisting conditions that contributed to the present crisis. We looked at the role peer pressure played in enforcing conformity to the new anti-Yogi Bhajan narrative and how that dynamic was brought into play by Pam Dyson. Family pressures, especially, daughters to mothers and wives to husbands, were assessed. The volatile and easily triggered dynamics of those carrying unresolved sexual trauma were examined in some detail, considering how under these circumstances it is much easier to agree to the allegations than to oppose them. Every publication of an article by magazines and newspapers, online and off, added momentum to this debacle. Social media, Facebook in particular, played its usual role as a powerful aggregator and multiplier of like-minded individuals on both sides. Online petitions, pro and con, provided a voice for thousands outside the administration to express their passion for or against the legacy of the Master. Other responses ranged from recorded webinars, participation in SSSC Board elections, daily online meditations, the commissioning of a professional report, new websites, online Sangat and a motion to encourage the involvement of younger people in the higher offices of the organization.
As there are no obvious signs of abatement on either side, it is difficult to foresee an outcome. While some pray for unity and others for renewal, still others are at work with axe and hammer to destroy the edifice of the Siri Singh Sahib. Old bonds of community are being challenged, sometimes destroyed, while new bonds and new conversations are arising out of the old. In this highly charged atmosphere, transference and acting out abounds, while the quiet knell of meditation too is in evidence. The perfect worm, humble augur of transformation, offers no perfect solution.