SAT TIRATH ASHRAM-BEACON OF LIGHT IN THE HEART OF AMERICA

In 1972, just three years after arriving in the United States, Yogi Bhajan conducted a rigorous teacher training course in Santa Clara, California for a large group of students. His declaration, “I have not come here to gain disciples,” he said, “I am here to train teachers.” It was a simple truth, and with it he sent these new Kundalini Yoga teachers out across the country to teach and spread the wisdom of the ancient yoga he taught them. Some went to Atlanta, some to Chicago, others to New Mexico and two former New Yorkers to Kansas City. There, they established Sat Tirath Ashram (which translates to Reflection or Mirror of Truth or Place of Pilgrimage).

 

Sat Tirath Ashram remains to this day, a place of light and love for those seeking the life-changing experience of Kundalini Yoga “as taught by Yogi Bhajan.” While the original founders of STA have since moved on, the ashram has maintained a presence in the Westport area of central Kansas City. Yoga classes have persisted there on a weekly and a daily schedule under the guidance of KartaPurkh Singh and Sat Inder Kaur. They have conducted regular classes and led a daily sadhana (spiritual practice in the hours before dawn). They are also Lead Trainers for Levels 1 & 2 teachers and have trained approximately 250 students, some of whom carry on teaching at the ashram on a regular basis.

 

Yogi Bhajan believed in group consciousness and living as a community as a way for the individual to expand and grow so the group might expand and grow into the Universal Consciousness that is the promise of the Aquarian Age. KartaPurkh and Sat Inder are currently seeking someone or a couple like themselves (only younger) who could take over the stewardship that was passed on to them by Yogi Bhajan in 1980. Kansas City is fertile ground for developing more teachers and students and the ashram will soon be serving the area for over fifty years. These new teachers would be guiding many sincere yogis, sevadors and Sikhs into the fullness of the Aquarian Age.

 

What follows is a brief portrayal of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings about Kundalini Yoga and the wisdom of groupp consciousness.

When you do sadhana in the sanghat, you enrich yourself in multiple ways. First, the isolation which can hit anybody and make them go totally crazy is defeated.

 

Secondly, when all of you meditate on God, the total effect of your sadhana becomes multiplied by the number of people participating. (KRI -ATTM)

Living in Isolation or Connection

 

“Isolation is not the law of life. Some people totally isolate themselves. Some people limit themselves in little … ways. As long as you isolate yourself in any identity, you have lost sight of infinity. (Your) identity given to you for reaching out to infinity.” (7/3/95)

 

Understand through time or time will pass you by

 

“However much you don’t understand, that much you (are) contracted. If you are contracted, then what is the use of life.”

 

 

Individual consciousness will refine you. Group consciousness will expand you. And Universal consciousness will redeem you to infinity.

 

Happiness and mastery of the spiritual facet of human life is a simple and direct practice. The problem is that we have never trained our minds to know our origin as infinity. Instead we run and hide under rituals. All places of worship meant to create group consciousness. Spiritual awakening starts with individual consciousness, then progresses to group consciousness. When group consciousness is established, where you care for others, then you can progress to Universal Consciousness.

 

Take care of the spiritual factor of your life by joining with others to experience and elevate yourself, the group and the Universe. When a person does not have and develop the strength of the individual consciousness toward group consciousness, he cannot attain the final experience of the Universal Consciousness.

 

Barriers will always exist. Lack of knowledge, lack of teacher, ego, fear and karma are all barriers. These barriers keep a person limited. The development of group consciousness into the experience of Infinity is the bridge to Universal Consciousness. It releases the unlimited self and fulfills the spiritual longing.