From: Dr. Connie Elsberg, Graceful Women (2003, p. 184)

“3HO marriages may be arranged by Yogi Bhajan, and all should be approved by him or by an ashram director. As we have seen, the theory is that marriage is a “yoking of souls”, and, as such, should not be based upon infatuation, physical attraction or emotional needs but on the partner’s potential for growth as a pair. A successful marriage is said to be a matching of “male and female polarities.” Yogi Bhajan is said to be able to judge the rightness of a union by viewing the auras of the individuals involved.

“Sometimes a marital arrangement simply involves Yogi Bhajan giving his stamp of approval to a couple who have already decided that they would like to marry. Some couples were already partners when they joined; others have been at dharma sponsored activities or in their ashrams, and have received permission to marry.

“And sometimes Yogi Bhajan has simply announced that two people are to marry.”

 

From: TERRIE

Yogi Bhajan would sit up on stage, especially in the early years, and simply point and say, “You! And you! Get married. Your auras look good together.” This was often done in front of a very big audience, you understand, and most of us went along with it because we believed he knew his stuff, that he could see things that we couldn’t see.

And he could, of course. Yogi Bhajan could see what innocent suckers we were.

 

From: RAFAEL

I’m not sure when the arranged marriages started. I don’t remember any arranged marriages in LA, and first observed it at the Summer Solstice in Paonia, which I think was 1970 or maybe 1971. The last day all of a sudden people were getting matched up. And they weren’t just turban people either. People were just astounded. These young couples were just stepping off the brink and people were amazed, and very uncritical.

By the next solstice, however, when there were even more arranged marriages, it was a much less spontaneous thing. All the ashram heads, and more particularly the ashram heads’ wives, were involved in these machinations over who should hook up with who. It was like trading baseball cards or something. Not that there were a ton of these marriages, but it was in the air all the time. I can’t tell you the number of times some amateur matchmaker tried to hook me up with some unappealing person – in fact the more mismatched you were the better some of these people liked it. Like the little tiny guy and his big wife. Or the guy who was from a very dynamic ashram – a big tall handsome guy – who got hooked up with somebody that I’m sure was mentally retarded (and I say that in a medical sense). Lots of sad matches.

 

From: RICARDO

I got engaged to a woman in L.A. whose former husband had disappeared. He walked out one morning saying he was running some errands, and never came back. He was seen later in NY and there he left the Dharma.

I met her first at a sangat party where somebody wanted to match us, yet nothing clicked, there was no interest for each other whatsoever. A week later YB called me and told me I had to get married in order to be able to stay in the US. His lawyer was also with him. He asked me if I wanted deal with this now or later. I responded in a week would be quite early enough.

Well, he had the lawyer call her right over. She had talked to him before about her idea to study psychology. He introduced her to me and said that he wanted to have a psychological profile with all my neuroses and hang-ups within a week. She thought it was an assignment regarding her question, the only strange thing was that I was pale like a wall.

By that time, I had lived in an ashram for almost 2 years, so I was familiar with the whole sequence about brothers and sisters, engagement, marriage, and sex. Plus, I had visited two Solstices and was quite appalled by a type of heavy-set, intense women. Additionally, I had made some painful choices in selecting women, so I thought YB’s choice couldn’t be much worse than mine.

Anyway, I told her the story of my life. We met one more time later to get her story. By then it was clear to her that it was about marriage. Later that week we met YB. He only asked me if she was okay. I said – hesitantly – yes. He asked her the same and we got engaged at the spot. He told us to have a romance. We waited 6 months before her divorce came through. The engagement was actually a pretty nice time, we had a kind of romance. Both of us have been quite devoted to YB, the Kundalini Yoga life style including sadhana, and the Sikh religion. So, sex was out of the question. We did some petting, from my side with guilt.

We got married. We drove somewhere to a cabin. I got very sick. Our sex was not good. After our return I got very depressed in the house we had rented. The combination of culture shock, living in America, sangat shock (from a small and quiet cozy ashram to the sharks of L.A.) an unknown future professionally, and this marriage did it.

For the next few years, we ran probably 3 or 4 times a year to YB, asking him for advice – from my side mostly about miserable sex, from hers about my depressions. He usually laughed, called us neurotic and fearful, and gave us a 40-day meditation, which we did faithfully. That patched it somehow until the next time. Additionally, during the week I often left L.A. to camp somewhere outside for one or two days. She was working in a family business.

We never thought about divorce or that the missing ingredient was simply love. We both believed that from doing sadhana and living the lifestyle, the sex would get better eventually, and being devoted would take care of it all.

Well, to a certain extent it did. We became good friends and companions on this journey. We decided we had worked out most of the kinks and were ready of have a child, to bring in a new soul on this path, a saint for Sikh Dharma. She got pregnant after a few tries. We had a beautiful and very high-energy 120th day celebration. An opportunity came up to move and work in a 3HO business. We took it; we didn’t want the child to grow up in intense and smoggy L.A. The child was born and my wife became an attached mother. I was stressed out at work, trying to make a run-down family business reasonable. The more mother and daughter lived their attachment, the more I pulled back. After 1½ years I got effectively kicked out of the 3HO business and found myself returning to my previous livelihood, teaching yoga, traveling and doing workshops, and yoga counseling. And also, I started to wake up that something was wrong.

When the daughter was 2½ YB told my wife that she should give the daughter to a couple in L.A. in order to get her health back, to take care of herself and her marriage. Well, she went into a state of shock and withdrawal as that happened. I had a chance to see the daughter on my monthly visits – it was terrible. The woman my daughter lived with was a drill sergeant, angry and righteous. Yet I turned it in my mind to make it to a valuable experience for the daughter. That lasted almost a year.

From that time on something was broke. I finally had several affairs outside the Dharma, where I encountered beautiful and fulfilling sex. And still I thought we could save our marriage. We saw a counselor, and it became a long, painful process. By that time, I had already begun to take the turban off and move away from Sikh Dharma, yet still holding onto the yoga and meditation part –in my mind I had always separated the two. It took me a few years until I finally saw that it was time for me to conclude the marriage. There was no way it was going to work out.

The final eye opener came when I made steps to file for a divorce. As long as there was some hope, she was willing to work on things – my intent was to establish a friendship for the sake of the child, and because we had spent 20 years together. Yet from that moment on, she turned, became angry, interested only in getting the house, possessions, money. Today there is no communication except about money and visitation.

 

From: TERRIE

I think YB did this very purposefully, arranging marriages that did not work out. It kept everybody busy at home too and guaranteed his position – YB always blamed one of the spouses, often both, also one against the other, so the shame/blame game as one of the forces to maintain the control in a cult was continuing forever.

 

From: LEIGH

To our faces YB called us his daughters and sons. He was willing to match people to us in marriage. But he had no personal feelings towards us. The crazy thing about it was that it took so long for many of us to put those two disconnected facts together. What a rat.

 

From: ALEX

My wife was married by arrangement TWICE in 3HO. First to an early Ashram head, then to a real winner who spent the entire 10 years of their marriage chasing every brass ring that bloated jerk Yogi Bhajan threw up in front of him: this “deal”, that “deal”, this “opportunity”, that “opportunity.” That sadistic conceited ass just needed more playthings. Arranged marriages provided him with endless entertainment.

 

From: SOPHIE

I can’t count the number of times I watched him entertain himself and his entourage by arranging for engagements and marriages, as well as rubber necking the newlyweds’ sex life in public. What with all the voyeurism, giggling, and blushing, the merriment never ceased.

 

From: MICKEY

I had a close call. I was sleeping as a guest in one of the trailers on the mountain around Solstice time. On the floor of course, in a sleeping bag. The whole experience reeked of low self-esteem on my part, and perhaps I had a bullseye painted on my back to attract Bigfoot’s attention. A car arrived in the dark around 1:00 am. Some puffed-up fellow announced his arrival, stating that I was “required by the SSS immediately at the ranch!”  OK.

So, I got dressed and took the arduous ride down the hill. I entered Jabba’s home, where I could hear him bellowing, “I ate a whole plate of chocolates just so I could have compassion for you tonight. Sit down!” “Yes Sir.” “Meet your new wife.”

Then hours of arguments about how much she loves me, and how she asked him to (forced me to) marry her. I was so honored to spend some time with this pompous jellyfish in the LazyBoy, I almost agreed, just to show my appreciation for him letting me smell the burps and farts that cascaded out of his rotting, quivering mass of flesh.

But I didn’t. My inner feelings vacillated between awe and fear of the man. Nevertheless, I refused to marry this woman whom I had never met, who apparently was infatuated with me from a distance in the Tantric lines. Kind of like a Peeping Yogi. Creepy and a little perverted if I do say.

Next day the Frog called me back to his glitterati estate for more yelling and mind-control sessions, intent on forcing me under duress to marry the stranger. Failing in his mission, he asked us to get engaged. The secretaries sat with rapt attention in the living room, against a wall in a setup that looked like the first row of bleachers around a mud-wrestling pit. I had become a spectator sport.

Bibiji suggested, “Maybe he has some unusual sex problem that prevents him from wanting this woman?!?” Imagine that. An instant clinical diagnosis from an abused woman whose expertise was limited to her own failed marriage. And a mean, inaccurate diagnosis at that! I refused. But I agreed to meet the femme fatale to learn more.

One of the secretaries said, “Well, Jiiiiiii ….. you shouldn’t question your DIVINE TEACHER’S INFINITE WISDOM!” She somehow morphed the subject of my marriage into a matter of my spiritual commitment and membership in the monkey tribe. Using her reasoning, if I refused to spend the rest of my life in union with this heretofore unknown herbivore, I was somehow disrespecting my teacher, not a good Sikh, and destined for spiritual disaster. I watched this same secretary, a self-professed expert in spiritual and marriage affairs, whose other profession involved drying dishes in the kitchen, depart 3HO some years later. I was not in a position to ask if she had since revised her opinion that I should marry any woman Mr. Elephantiasis wanted me to “jus git hitched up” simply because he was my teacher.

Anyway, back to the marriage candidate:

We spent about two weeks chatting a lot. Actually, it was more like a couple of days. And on these days, it was only for one hour at lunch and a one-hour chat on the grass in front of the Gurudwara. She seemed like a pleasant enough person. I would have no objection to recommend her to a seat at the UN. But after much observation (two hours) I decided she certainly wasn’t destined for my hearth and home. I remembered Nancy Reagan’s campaign slogan, “Just say NO.”

The poor thing broke down in tears. Why? What could she possibly know about me? Looks? Anatomy? Bank account? Smell? What? I drew a blank. I offered some very nice philosophical opinions intending to help her get over it all. I felt like one of those pigeons you always see running around the plaza, fervently trying to get away, while another one is hot on its tail. I remembered the old, “walk, don’t run routine”. Anyway, the lady survived and left 3HO.

And, he gave me that line, “If I weren’t married to Bibiji, I (emphasize with a huge capital “I”) would marry this woman!!!”

Well, Gee, what a line. Use the innocent student’s admiration for the charismatic teacher to get the student to want to stand in the teacher’s shoes. And, also, by using clever algorithms: if I marry THIS woman, I get to put my penis in the same place my teacher would put his if he weren’t married to Bibiji! Well, if that is the psychology of the Flabbermeister’s game of “shuttlecock”, why not just go straight to the source and bend YB over and slam a home run into his first chakra?

Good God what was I doing to not see clearly the mechanisms underway, on a technical level?

In my experience 3HO marriages are all about Fatty yelling abusive threats at well-intended but gullible students and other youth, throwing in some serious tantrums and mind control stuff, throwing around lots of glittering temptations and charisma, and getting a match to produce children to generate more money and foot massages for you-know-who.