This is my first post.
My bestfriend has become increasingly involved with kundalini yoga, at first it was just going to classes then one day she said she was going to take the teacher training. This still didn't raise any flags for me.
A couple of months ago I fell back into depression(which I've had since I was 13) she called me and told me of a friend of hers who was a prophet and I should really talk to him and he had told her all this stuff and it was so true. I agreed which I normally wouldn't do but she had been saying little things here and there that were making me wonder what she was doing. I talked to this "prophet" and the jist of the conversation was that if I believed enough I wouldn't be depressed."
Several of her friends are "prophets" or "gurus"
Last month she signed up for a kundalini trip to India with all women. This trip is costing her about 3 grand and I found out that the teaching course was about 4 grand. She is a student with outrageous debts. With the India course the "top" guru in her yoga studio told her she basically had to find a way to go because it was very important and will allow her to find her soul. Today she called me as she is coming home for the holidays and told me that she had a long talk with the top guru and she had told her that in a past life she was a powerful and evil person and that she should go home and be humble and serve someone who abused her during her teenage years. That it was "karmic payback time for her past lives." and that she had to humble herself.

I hadn't really done any research on kundalini or 3HO until today.

How do I get my friend to see she is in a cult? Im afraid to say anything BUT more afraid for what might happen when she is far away in India, away from everyone.

If anyone has any experiance with this please give me any advice...

Thank you!

Quite a few people have complained about 3HO. And the organization has a troubled history and has been called a "cult."

See [www.culteducation.com]

You might find these "Coping Strategies" helpful.

See [www.culteducation.com]

hi worried friend. there's a lengthy dicussion going on in this thread - [forum.culteducation.com].

please take some time to look at it. if she's just STARTING in the group....you can help her by trying to help her direct her energies on other things, and subtly help her see that these people are a bit crazy. if she's really far into it, then it's incredibly tough. the best thing you can do is to educate yourself and ensure you and others around her don't fall into the same trap, and also to provide a supportive enviroment - and by supportive i mean that you will support tryng to help her see reality, not as in supporting her cultish asctivities. she needs a safety net for when she falls too far, and needs to have as much connections with reality as possible. also try to have her talk to former 3ho members, esepcially f she's still in the curiousity stage and isn't fully sucked in. if you don't say anything, things will get worse. these people have been brainwashing both indians and westerners for almost 40 years now. they want you to stay silent, because it's part of their control tactics. they are famous for going on forums and picking fights with and tryng to brainwash those who speak out against them. also be aware that you may face this as well, but please don't let it deter you. in fact, this is a warning sign, and should make you more stronger about your intuition giving you doubtful feelings. i myself am sikh, but im a mainstream sikh. i am one of those who are tryng to help get the word out about these frauds, because they are doing so much harm. please keep at it, and best of luck!

To worried friend:
As Kundalini Yoga instructor i have seen many cases when a professor or teacher fails in the duty of serving the student and in to delivery in an impecable way the Teachings of Kundalini Yoga.
I was in first place, interested in this forum because i like to see all the point of views and i want to say something never taught is in the training workshop: no one can impose any point of view over your personal beliefs system ever, that person who tries that is not a real teacher and its failing since the first time. Saddly, that important rule is broken very often (not only in KY groups but in all power structures relationships)

What i can tell is that if some person charges you 4 thousand dollars for a workshop and at the middle of it tells you to go away or something like that, i think that person needs to be sued, or maybe she can try to first have a direct talk to the people of the organization so they return her money right away. I have been deceived by many people in different spiritual traditions...but when you are a true seeker you will always keep your path to find all the things you feel are important to complete your actual journey.

I have not seen a cult structure in KY, a least in Mexico, which is the country where I live. I have found very conscious people and a lots of young ones who like me, criticise everything that is not coherent begining with our own KY insructors and organizations....

But i am really upset that your friend has been tricked in that way and also to see that many KY teachers just have the turbant, and all the external fashion but they lack of all the aplied tools that a real KY must use in the daily life....also I hate that when I compare word by word the teachings of YB (i didnt meet him, so i dont have proof about the things people say about him) with the behaivour of many teachers and they seem to have forgotten everything that yoga teacher left in his books....

And finally I just want to invite the people of the forum to avoid an anticult "cult" by calling everything that tries to make an effort for bringing tools for human growing a cult without enough proof...one tree doesnt make the forest.

Remember, all human institutions have a 100% tendency to fail because the simple fact they are made by humans (doesnt matter if the fundators were super iluminated, they were super iluminated HUMANS)

Thanks for sharing and i am not speaking trying to defend "my sect" but a person who follows its heart and is open to universal knowledge and cultures.

blessings to all people in the forum

I have been taking Kundalini yoga off and on for a couple of years now. At first I was a little freaked about the chanting because I did not understand it and it was a flashback from my church going days of "speaking in tongues". The teacher has been great and patient with me and explained things to me, I've never had anything happen like the writer of this threads experience/knowing about it. Coming out of a cultish church that I was in most of my life, Kundalini does not seem at all like a cult to me. It also seems to help my health and emotional stress, if anything I think it's helping heal my church past. On the other hand, (I'm not that involved as I would like to be not able to go more than 1time a week) maybe every group is different. If there is one I have learned from this website and other cult-exposing etc. is every church, cult and leader is different, you can't lump them all together in the same group.

Sigh, I'lll guess I'll have to take this one on as nobody else seems interested.

3HO is a cult. And a particularly nasty, powerful, and well-connected one. Good place to start: Rick's page of multiple links about the dark side of 3HO.

http://www.culteducation.com/groups/3ho.html#A%20Special%20Report

fun facts:

-YB got his start as a customs official at the New Delhi airport in India, a country notorious for corrupt customs officials.

-He then came to Sunset Blvd in the late 60s and joined the other cult leaders trying to recruit burned out hippies off the street.

-He then moved his organization to New Mexico and turned it into a paramilitary org, including a very successful security company with multiple contracts with the government. If you saw the news about the security guard who was killed in Las Vegas last week, for example, he worked for 3H0's Akol Security, which frighteningly has contracts with everyone from DHS to Treasury to airports. They were also in charge of security at Oklahoma City during that bombing.

-While it is strange enough that a yoga group (peace and love, man!) would be involved in Homeland Security contracting and profiteering in general, it becomes outright disturbing when coupled with the fact that major 3HO leaders were convicted of drug trafficking in the SF Bay Area during the 80s, as part of a Thai-based smuggling operation. This has never caused them to lose their government contracts, amazingly enough.

It is possible that his work with American intelligence gave him a "get out of jail free" card for his shadier enterprises.


[fateh.sikhnet.com]

Richardson confided that he had arranged for top American intelligence officials to consult with "Yogiji" in Washington D.C. on the potentially explosive dynamics of South Asian politics concerning India and Pakistan.

Yogi Bhajan, who founded 3H0, has been dead for several years. As a group 3HO is now pretty small. There are lots of non-3HO kundalini yoga treachers around and only a few of the old 3ho mafia types. Businesses like Akal Security and KRI will probably continue, as will Sikh Dharma, the religious side of Yogi Bhajan's creation, but there is no real cult to fall into anymore, only culty thinking and the small time culty groups that are anchored by some of YB's former echelon.

"but there is no real cult to fall into anymore, only culty thinking and the small time culty groups that are anchored by some of YB's former echelon."

-That's good to hear. Are the mafia types, as you call them, still running the boiler room type scams? The worst one I remember was where they were calling people in Canada, telling them they won the Canadian lottery, but that they first needed to send a $10,000 "claim fee" to ensure their payment.

I don't think any of that is going on anymore. A few people went to jail for that. There are still a number of smarmy 3ho or ex-3ho business types who I would very much stay away from however. That is true of life in general of course but what we have learned here is that a spiritual veneer in business is often completely meaningless, and often, grounds for suspicion.

To be fair, there are also a number of turbaned westerners who try hard to do business according to the golden rule.

3HO has a horrible history.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Yogi Bhajan seems to have been little more than a con man.

IMO nothing about the group is trustworthy.

And everything is suspect.