Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan

by Pamela Dyson

As a woman, I had an organic, instinctive urge toward giving myself to a man.

This is such a 3HO mindset!

I am grateful that you have finally understood that you must complete your karmic duty to serve me.

“Your devotion must be so pure, like that devotee who can just walk in on her teacher. Finding him naked and having intercourse with one of his female students, her response was to put a blanket over both of them, and quietly leave the room, closing the door behind her. That is the sign of a pure devotion. To see but not see.”

“Once a woman has reached 30 years of age, she has reached her peak. From there on, it is all downhill.” I was fast approaching 40, so that seemed to be another deterrent, as his every word was received as truth, like scientific fact, and such words formed the teachings that were the ground of the entire community’s belief systems.

YB, the Picasso of cult leaders (h/t Nanette)

You are married, AND you have a dozen other relationships. Why must I be denied even one?”

I was heartbroken whenever someone finally took off the turban and left, often in the dark of night. Each departure was quickly condemned by the Yogi.

No one ever challenged his version of reality. In fact, he defined their reality.

His inner circle witnessed along with me, and I saw how they applauded and found God’s Will as well as humor in the Yogi’s decisions to upend lives, to marry people to strangers, to send young children away from their parents to schools in India. With every individual appointment, and every life turned upside down, the faithful ones in that inner circle would knowingly nod and smile, then repeat the mantra that ‘It’s all God’s Will’. To my pained and more cynical eyes, this ‘God’s Will’ was now looking tainted, and highly suspect.