Word: yoga
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...brief illuminations offered without a trace of condescension: an intriguing commentary on the opening bars of the Beethoven concerto, one of the fruits of Menuhin's own groping "from intuition through intellectual analysis to restored spontaneity," hints on teaching correct fluidity of motion and allusions to his practise of Yoga as an aid to technique. Finally, Menuhin offers a felicitous exploration of his own supreme art, almost shyly, as though he hesitated to expose so personal an insight: The interpreter's duty is threefold. First, he must master the numberless muscular pressures which in every position on every string will...
...Bhajan emigrated to Toronto, later that year moved to Los Angeles and eventually started his own ashram-spiritual commune-in a garage. Although India's Sikhs are renowned as meat eaters, Bhajan has insisted that his followers be strict vegetarians. While yoga is not part of Sikhism, Bhajan teaches the practice, and not the mild form widespread in the U.S. but Tantrism, a strenuous, mystical variety practiced by men and women in pairs. Claiming to be the only living master of Tantrism, Bhajan stresses Kundalini yoga, which supposedly releases secret energy that travels up the spine. He reveals breathing...
Less visible than the cymbal-clanging Hare Krishnas, the 3HO disciples rival them in devotion. Men and women alike follow the Sikh traditions of not cutting their hair and bearing symbolic daggers, combs and bracelets. Ashram members rise at 3:30 a.m. to practice yoga and meditate, sometimes while staring at a picture of Bhajan. They often work twelve hours a day on low salaries and skimpy diets at 3HO small businesses, such as landscaping companies, shoe stores, and quality vegetarian restaurants. Full-fledged initiates follow Bhajan's every dictum on diet, medical nostrums, child rearing, even orders...
Bhajan has his critics-and they are severe. Many traditional Sikhs insist that yoga has no place in their religion. Sikh Historian Trilochan Singh says Bhajan's synthesis of Sikhism and Tantrism is "a sacrilegious hodgepodge." Far more important, High Priest Jaswant Singh, a leader of the Sikhs in eastern India and comparable in status to Bhajan Backer Tohra, last week denounced Bhajan's claims. He and his council professed to be "shocked" at Bhajan's "fantastic theories." Yoga, Tantrism and the "sexual practices" taught by Bhajan, the council declared, are "forbidden and immoral...
There are more delicate matters at issue, many raised by people who knew Bhajan when. Judith Tyberg, respected founder of Los Angeles' East-West Center, where Bhajan briefly gave courses, questions his knowledge of Kundalini yoga. She fired him from her faculty after three months for another reason -which she refuses to divulge...