Sat Santokh Singh Khalsa's Obituary
Sat Santokh Singh Khalsa, Radical, Do-Gooder, Father, Dead at 84
Sat Santokh Singh Khalsa, who strove to be a radiant example of how to live on the planet, died Feb. 21 at approximately 5:50 p.m. PST shortly before sunset at his home in San Leandro, California in the Bay Area. He passed peacefully, surrounded by family and friends, at 84.
Khalsa, whose given name was Bertram Kanegson, was born into a loving Jewish family in the Bronx, New York in October 1939, the month after Germany invaded Poland at the start of World War II.
Like many Jewish families of the time, and particularly in the years following the end of the war, he had fond memories of spending summers in Mountain Dale in the Catskill Mountains, reading under his favorite apple tree, going swimming in the lake, or hiking in the woods. His parents, Morris and Sylvia Kanegson, surrounded him and his sister — and everyone in their orbit — with love.
In 1945, at six years old, Khalsa remembered having a deeply impactful experience of the Holocaust while watching newsreels at a local movie theater, seeing what he described as “the same horrible images over and over again” of “skeleton-like human beings” during the liberation of concentration camps across Europe.
He also remembered being aware that a very large portion of his family had perished during the Holocaust and of encountering family at his grandparents’ home in tears as they greeted one of his few surviving relatives, who he was told had just come to New York after spending years at a concentration camp.
The pain and horror he felt in response to these experiences helped shape the trajectory of his life as a radical and peacemaker. It was a primary force in his lifelong quest to “do something” to change the way we treat each other.
As a young man, Khalsa attended Hunter College and transferred to the City College of New York in 1958. It was during his time at City College, when he moved to Greenwich Village, where he had some of his earliest encounters with America’s counterculture, sharing the same circles as activists, actors, poets, writers, dancers, musicians, composers, and others of the Beat Generation.
After graduating with an undergraduate degree in philosophy in January 1961, he got involved in nuclear non-proliferation efforts spearheaded by A.J. Muste and Dorothy Day, refusing to take shelter as an act of civil disobedience in recognition of the futility of such drills in the face of nuclear war.
From there, Khalsa joined the War Resisters League (WRL) where he met Bayard Rustin, one of the key figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Khalsa later described Rustin as a “mentor and hero… who was a living example of how to apply strategic non-violent practices to many social changes issues, and who was willing to put his life on the line to do so.”
In 1964, Khalsa moved to San Francisco, helping establish the WRL’s presence on the West Coast. One of his first acts was to organize a demonstration against the war in Vietnam, enlisting the support of folk musician and activist Joan Baez.
However, by 1966, he had grown increasingly disillusioned by the failure of the anti-war effort to effect immediate change. While the movement was growing, so was the war — and he was burnt out.
Khalsa found himself drawn to the budding hippie movement of the 1960s. He attended the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park, coming across luminaries of the time like Alan Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and Richard Alpert, who later became known as Ram Dass.
Eventually, he resigned from the WRL and became involved in what he called “an ad hoc Haight-Ashbury committee,” which helped organize events and free concerts that included bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
His embrace of San Francisco’s counterculture movement also ultimately led to him becoming one of the managers of the Grateful Dead and developing a close friendship with lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia during some of the band’s peak years of influence. Khalsa was with the Grateful Dead when they performed at Woodstock and at Altamont.
It was at Altamont in 1969 where he infamously had a nearly fatal encounter with the Hells Angels, who had been hired to run security for the festival, that left him with 60 stitches in his skull. He was one of many who were severely injured at the festival.
The disastrous experience of Altamont was a clear signal for Khalsa that it was time for a change.
Just months before, he had attended an event called the Holy Man Jam at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, a concert venue off of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. There, Khalsa remembered meeting a range of spiritual leaders, including a Sikh man, Yogi Bhajan, who introduced him to yoga.
Khalsa immediately felt a deep connection to Yogi Bhajan. While that connection became more complex and soured after Yogi Bhajan’s death decades later in the face of deeply disturbing and widely accepted allegations that, among other concerning behaviors, Yogi Bhajan had engaged in numerous instances of sexual abuse and harassment, the encounter led to a drastic shift in the course of Khalsa’s life.
He eventually became heavily involved in and helped establish the “Kundalini Yoga” community in the San Francisco Bay Area. His focus on having a positive impact on the world — to “do something” — also shifted to some extent to creating change through expanding individual consciousness.
Over the next decades, Khalsa helped introduce generations of Americans to yoga and spiritual practice as both a teacher and teacher trainer, working as a surveyor across the state to help support himself and his family when he was unable to earn an income elsewhere.
But his activism remained a steadfast part of his life.
In 1982, he organized a “Meeting of the Ways” event at Stanford called “Aspiring to Enlightened Action in the Nuclear Age” that brought together his anti-war and spiritual communities in common cause against the threat of nuclear war. Speakers included Yogi Bhajan, Swami Satchidananda, Pir Vilayat, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Ram Dass, Daniel Ellsberg, and Joanna Macy.
In 1987, his activism also manifested in the launch of Creating Our Future (COF), a social action training organization for high school students. With the support of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ram Dass, Joanna Macy, and others, COF — which, driven by youth leaders, focused on environmental activism — reached students across the country through local chapters, summer camps, and monthly workshops.
As the San Francisco Chronicle put it at the time, it was the sixties generation helping out the eighties crowd.
The effort also eventually resulted in the creation in 1991 of Rainforest Products, a cereal company led by Khalsa that used nuts harvested from the Amazon to mitigate deforestation. The idea behind the company was to help protect the environment by creating a market for Brazil nuts, which generally only grow in pristine, undisturbed forests where pollinators are able to flourish.
Throughout this period of his life, Khalsa remained an active yoga teacher, and, whether it was working with youth at COF events or as a teacher, people often confided in him about their traumatic experiences.
Over time, he came to the epiphany that “we all carry wounds to our self-worth that deeply affect our relation to ourselves, to others, and to the world.”
He eventually developed what he called “Self-Worth Journeys” to help people process their inner childhood wounds. He became dedicated to helping people be able to “trust and to allow the flow of life’s physical, emotional, spiritual, and material abundance.”
By 2003, he began leading group workshops through the process in California and around the world. By 2007, he started training others in how to do the work, listening to more than 2,000 people share their life stories, their fears, and their hopes.
And, while no longer a key figure in the anti-war movement, Khalsa still often found himself called back to his activist roots. In 2004, for instance, he was a featured speaker at the Power to the Peaceful Festival in Golden Gate Park organized by activist and musician Michael Franti.
In the last years of his life, Khalsa spent much of his time dedicated to his healing work. It was the next frontier in his long quest to help change the world. He believed to his core that the root cause of xenophobia, authoritarianism, white supremacy, and other social ills was directly linked to extreme physical and emotional abuse inflicted on children.
But whether as a result of sexual, emotional, or physical abuse, of neglect, or other life circumstances, Khalsa was convinced that we all come into this world innocent and worthy of love.
And that is perhaps ultimately the overriding theme of his life: Born into love, guided by love, and blessed to leave this world surrounded by love.
Khalsa was cremated on Monday in Hayward, California, bathed one last time in his physical form in the love of his family, friends, and community.
He joins his granddaughter Siri Atma Khalsa, who tragically passed away in a car accident in 2021 at the age of 18.
Khalsa is survived by his wife of 41 years, Prabhu Nam Kaur Khalsa; his children, Andrew Kanegson, Jiwan Khalsa, Snatam Kaur Khalsa, Nam Kirn Davenport, Steve Gertner, and Rishi Khalsa; his grandchildren, Forrest Davenport, Sarib Jot Kaur Khalsa, Jap Preet Kaur Khalsa, and Alixe Gertner; his sister, Ruth Levine; and innumerable loved ones.
What’s your fondest memory of Sat Santokh?
What’s a lesson you learned from Sat Santokh?
Share a story where Sat Santokh's kindness touched your heart.
Describe a day with Sat Santokh you’ll never forget.
How did Sat Santokh make you smile?