About The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®
The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® Web Site
The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® Web Site aims to serve all who seek holistic living and spirituality, including teachers, students, and practitioners of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan®. The Kundalini Research Institute team is responsible for this project to provide teachings that enrich your foundations, practice, and training.
The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® is a searchable online database of resources to enrich understanding of Kundalini Yoga and the teachings of Yogi Bhajan through a lecture repository, audio and video clips, and Kundalini Yoga Kriyas and Meditations taught by Yogi Bhajan.
Yogi Bhajan's recorded legacy of teachings on topics such as lifestyle, meditation, Ayurveda, Sikh Dharma, and Kundalini Yoga is nothing short of a modern miracle. There was no formal plan for an ‘archive' in 1969 when Yogi Bhajan first came to the United States from India, and yet students diligently recorded his teachings with the understanding that the technology being offered would uplift and inform present and future generations.
The lectures on this site were recorded in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia and Africa at college campuses, YMCAs, ashrams, Summer and Winter Solstice gatherings, yoga festivals, holistic/religious symposiums, medical conferences and women's, men's and children's camps.
Please keep in mind, lecture transcripts are a verbatim capture of what Yogi Bhajan said and how he said it. All spoken language has a unique ungrammatical cadence. The transcripts are not edited and follow the audio/video as closely as possible. There may be spelling or transliteration errors and we are grateful to know about them, so we can correct them. Thank you.
Yogi Bhajan took as a motto "happiness is your birthright", and his teachings sought to give each person the unique experience of their true infinite self. He shared yogic teachings on, exercise, diet and health, money, business success, communication, sacred sexuality, conscious childbirth, spiritual relationships and Aquarian child-raising. His teachings also contain Universal messages and technology from the Sikh religion, which formed the basis of Yogi Bhajan's spirituality.
How fortunate we are to have such a body of teachings available to help guide us through the Aquarian Age! Enjoy your exploration of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® . Sat Nam!
The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings - Getting to Know Us
Recording the Master's Words
1968 – Yogi Bhajan comes to the West as a Master of Kundalini Yoga.
1969 – Yogi Bhajan teaches his first class in the United States on January 5, 1969, entitled "The Art and Science of Liberation" at the Alhambra YMCA in Southern California. Even though no students came to the class, the man who drove Yogi Bhajan had a tape recorder and recorded the class. The lecture was transcribed, printed and eventually distributed to students.
1970s – As Yogi Bhajan traveled and taught, his staff recorded his lectures on cassette tapes. Many students took copious notes, made drawings and took Polaroid photos of yogic postures. The first yoga manuals were compiled and verified by the Kundalini Research Institute (KRI). Longtime student Siri Ved Singh began audiotaping lectures at the early White Tantric Yoga® courses and also began taping the Los Angeles Kundalini Yoga classes. Shakti Parwha Kaur (Mother of 3HO) sent out newsletters containing transcripts of his lectures.
1980s/1984 – Dharam Singh Khalsa begins videotaping Yogi Bhajan's Los Angeles classes. Siri Ved Singh Khalsa continued to travel with Yogi Bhajan recording, in audio and later in video, his classes and courses in the United States and throughout the world. Transcribing took place for many years by students during Khalsa Women's Training Camp and at 3HO Solstice gatherings. These lectures were edited and published by KRI.
1990s – By the early 1990s, demand for Yogi Bhajan's teachings grew exponentially. The concept for transcribing the entirety of his lectures resulted in a business established in Bangalore, India under the direction of Satsimran Kaur, a member of Yogi Bhajan's staff. The first employee hired was Vijayalakshmi who came on board as transcriptionist. She has stayed with the project for two decades and continues to help manage information for the website. The Bangalore office employed up to 10 people at a time who worked shifts around the clock in order to maximize efficiency. The employees, who were not Yogi Bhajan's students, shared their profound experience of listening to the lectures. Many said their lives were changed just by the process of transcribing his lectures from tape to text.
Funding for the Library of Teachings project came from thousands of individual donors as well as through the International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association (IKTYA). Lectures transcribed also included Yogi Bhajan's lectures in Sikh temples (Gurdwaras) beginning in the early 70s, when he was also designated Siri Singh Sahib, the head of Sikh Dharma for the Western Hemisphere.
2000s – At the dawn of the New Millenium, technology shifted to allow the vision of an internet-based searchable database become a foreseeable goal. The Kundalini Research Institute's Board of Directors realized the critical need to preserve the original media in digital format due to natural degradation of original media. KRI began the digitization of video and audio tapes with archival partners Scene Savers and Mahern Archival Preservation in January of 2009. After a thorough pilot project in 2008, work began in earnest, and at the beginning of 2014 was moving toward completion. In 2008, Siri Ved Singh Khalsa was awarded a lifetime achievement award for his dedication in recording Yogi Bhajan's classes.
KRI worked with Dakota Systems and Convivial Design to outline the parameters and needs of what would eventually become the The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® Website. The dream of realizing a global teaching tool of the magnitude of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® continued to take shape. The website design was finally mapped out by Avalon Technology, Joti Software and the database of lectures was compiled to form the searchable database that interfaces with the video and audio recordings.
2013 to Present – Over 6,500 lectures have been transcribed in either first or second form. Hundreds of lectures still remain to be transcribed. As the project of developing a searchable database evolved, Joti Software came on the scene to sculpt and refine the final project. After several months of programming new features and streamlining the administrative capabilities of the website, the Beta Test of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® rolled out in August 2013. A volunteer team of longtime students and Kundalini Yoga teachers signed on to shake out the "bugs" and see for themselves the culmination of nearly four decades of dedication to preserving the technology shared by Yogi Bhajan.
Current Features of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®
2018 Video Update!
For All Users
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Currently the database contains more than three thousand published lectures with thousands more to be integrated. Many of these lectures include corresponding audio and/or video files and Kundalini Yoga and Meditation write-ups.
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An interactive transcript capability, featuring a captioned transcript with each video. Transcripted text scrolls as video plays, or you can select a section in the captioning and the video moves to that point and begins to play.
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Full-search capabilities with a number of robust filtering "facets" to allow users to discover and define the search by topic, location, decade/date, media (audio/video/kriya), and event type.
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Ability to donate to the Library and/or sponsor lectures to support the ongoing archival efforts of preserving the teachings.
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Relevant content recommendations based on your keyword searches.
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A Lecture Randomizer feature that allows you to "tune in" to the wisdom of Yogi Bhajan.
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Ads highlighting books, CDs, DVDS and yogic resources related to Yogi Bhajan's teachings.
For Registered Users
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Notation feature enables personal annotation of lectures and comments to be shared online with other users.
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Bookmarking capability allows you to save your favorite lectures for quick reference.
About Our Funding
The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® depends on donations from the global community of students, teachers, and practitioners. Gurdakshina and direct donations to The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® have been ongoing, from $11 a month to $500 a month, donors like you have been creating the foundation for the archive over the past 15 years. Continued sponsorship is necessary to keep the work of the archive moving forward:
- Finalizing the video and audio digitization project
- Continued administration of the Archive
- Translations and Content Development
Donate Now!
Sponsorship
To sponsor a lecture, or part of a lecture, simply go to the lecture you wish to sponsor, click on the "Sponsor" button, fill in your name (optional) and email address, and pick an amount up to $1008. Sponsors are recognized by displaying their name in the sidebar next to the lecture.
In this way, lecture-by-lecture, the foundation of the archive will be built for future generations. All donations are tax-deductible and go directly to the work of the archive. Please give generously — and give today!
Onward
The focus of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® continues to center on archiving, digitizing, transcribing and editing thousands of lectures, kriyas and yoga sets.
Countless individuals have served this project over the years, both directly and indirectly, through donations, sponsorships and helping to transcribe the teachings. The work will continue for many years to preserve and prepare the assets that comprise The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® . Please know that your participation in this historic project makes it a reality. Through your heartfelt donations, lecture sponsorships and volunteer efforts, we will continue to refine and develop this amazing tool for awareness in the Aquarian Age.
The hope is that this database will continue to inspire others to write, teach, study and develop the tools of higher consciousness for years to come. This Library carries on an amazing legacy that is positively touching and changing of millions of lives.
Let us leave behind a legacy and serve the lineage to uplift the mankind; let there be peace and let the privilege of life and beauty and bounty be our reward.
Yogi Bhajan, March 31, 1993
- Photo Archiving Project
– An individual grant has so far enabled the archiving of many of the 80,000 of historical photos of Yogi Bhajan and the people he met and touched. This ongoing project represents an archival repository of nearly 40 years of imagery.
- Correspondence Archive
– Yogi Bhajan counseled and taught many of his students through letters. We are continuing to organize, file, research and compile the teachings found in written correspondence.
