Yogi Bhajan’s Grandmother

The devotion and consciousness of Yogi Bhajan’s family created an environment in which he thrived. In addition to his mother being his first teacher, Yogi Bhajan’s grandmother, Ishar Kaur, was also his teacher. She was a living example of righteousness, devotion and wisdom. 

On July 29, 1976, at Khalsa Women’s Training Camp (KWTC) in Espanola, New Mexico, Yogi Bhajan shared this experience of his grandmother:

“In my life, I have met only one Sikh woman, and that was my grandmother.  It is not because she was my grandmother, it is because she was a Sikh woman. In her life, no one in the family ever heard her yelling, screaming, or talking loudly.  Yet, I have never seen a single person in the entire family, in the entire village, who could afford to disobey her.  Her word was nothing but law.”

Yogi Bhajan’s Grandmother Taught with Love and Devotion

“She would get up early in the morning at 3:00 a.m., take her bath, do her sadhana and finish by 4:30 a.m.  Then she would take yoghurt and churn it, chanting, ‘Sat Nam, Wahe Guru’ the whole while.  Then about 6:00 a.m. you would find her with fresh butter, buttermilk and chapaatees (a thin bread).  All of the children would come around.  She would make us breakfast, which was the healthiest thing in the world, and ask us to first correctly recite one pauree of Japji.  That is how she used to teach us.”

Woman: The Beacon of Purity and Sanctity

“Once, I remarked to her that all the while she was working, she was chanting Gurbaanee.  She told me, ‘Women are meant to purify and sanctify everything on this Earth.  Everything which women touch becomes divine, and the only way to make something divine is to sanctify it with the Word of the Guru, so that it will become pure, it will become healthy, and it will become ever-living.’

She was the wife of a man who was the head of the village, and everybody respected her.  Every little item in the village, and any injustice or justice, was brought to her.  She was supposed to listen to every appeal and every complaint.  I never saw her getting upset and I never heard her talk about anybody in his absence.  Once, I asked her, ‘Grandma, how do you decide everything, so it is always right?  She said, ‘I decide things in the light of the Truth.  I never decide things for gain or loss.’

That is the human sentiment, that is human living, and you are supposed to live to that expectation.”

In his lecture from July 11, 1997, titled Woman Within Woman: Applied Identity” the Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan said:

“Woman is a living psyche—vibrating, organic, original. All she has to remember is to live in the consciousness of: “I am a woman.”

Learn more about Yogi Bhajan´s life