Looking Toward 2012: The KRI Capital Campaign

We at KRI are working to lay the cornerstone of the living legacy that is The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings—and you can help! As teachers and practitioners of Kundalini Yoga and students of Yogi Bhajan, you are a part of this living legacy. With your help, we will make this legacy a living reality.  Yogi Bhajan’s legacy includes over 8,000 classes recorded during a span of 36 years. Our goal is to make these teachings accessible through a database of video, audio, and written transcripts. Currently, streaming videos on www.kriteachings.org and SikhNet as well as broadcasts of his gurdwara lectures on the JusPunjabi cable channel give us a small glimpse of what is to come.

The goal and scope of The Library of Teachings is to archive, preserve and create online access to the entire recorded library of Yogi Bhajan's Teachings by the end of 2012. Many of these recordings are more than 30 years old and are quickly degenerating—unless we act quickly!

How You Can Help
Our archival partners—Scene Savers (video) and Mahern Audio Engineering (audio)—are currently working on the Pilot Project, 100 video and audio tapes selected to represent the archive as a whole, its projected problems and solutions. Scheduled to be completed by end of summer 2008, the Pilot Project will let us know exactly what we need in man-hours and in dollars to complete the entire archival project by 2012.

Our current projections indicate that we would need a minimum of $250K per year to complete the archival process alone. To reach our goal, we must begin archiving and preserving up to 200 video and audio tapes per month over the next 3 ½ years.

KRI is committed to funding up to $21K per month toward this archival project and we need your help. We are making a long-term commitment to this project and we invite you to do the same. With our online donation program, you can become a friend of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings today!

Our Vision: The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings

As the keepers of Yogi Bhajan’s legacy, the Kundalini Research Institute sees itself not only as a wisdom-holder of this ancient technology, but also as a resource for expanding our knowledge and experience of the boundaries of human consciousness.

Before our vision can become complete, we must first fulfill our task as custodians—to preserve and archive these sacred teachings for future generations.

With 10 years invested in this project so far, we have made great progress:

• Transcription Project: In our Bangalore, India office, KRI continues to transcribe lectures. Over 6,000 lectures are transcribed in either first or second form to date. More than 2,000 are yet to be transcribed. This project will be completed in 2009.

• Searchable Transcription Database: In 2008, we will continue the process of identifying and tagging concepts from the teachings within the text of his lectures, to create a meaningful, searchable database.

• Library Management System and the Digital Asset Management System (DAM): KRI will implement a Library Management System in 2008 and has a full-time Librarian on staff. This is a first step toward a more comprehensive DAM that will integrate the audio, video, and transcription data assets into a single, accessible, and user-friendly online data management system.

• Archival Preservation Project: The pilot project for the archival preservation of the video and audio library will be completed by the end of 2008. Fundraising for the completion of the archival preservation of the video and audio begins now. This is essential, as many tapes are several decades old and are beginning to deteriorate.

• Correspondence Archive: Yogi Bhajan counseled and taught many of his students through his letters. We are continuing to research and compile the teachings found in these letters.

• Photo Archiving Project: A recent individual grant enables us to start the project of archiving the thousands of historic photos of Yogi Bhajan and the people he touched in the spring/summer of 2008.