Advanced Class
Yogi Bhajan’s lecture on being human, living without fear in the wilderness of social convention and reversing the direction of its influence.
Location: Los Angeles, CA
From: Yogi Bhajan’s lecture in the library of teachings.
YB: And I went to interfaith meeting and there we met people from every walk of Christian faith, people from Jewish faith, Baha’is what not, Sikh Dharma whatever it is, there was about four, five hundred people and then I went to see this Church, old orthodox Church and there was saying of Jesus, ‘If man has the whole world and loses his soul, what worth is that world to him?’
And I am asking the same question to you, if you have the whole world in the palm of your hand and the price is that you have to dump your soul for it, what worth is the life? Are you born to cater to your emotions? Or you were born to master your emotions? Are you so magnetically powerful that you can play any neurotic game and you just say, ‘I am sorry’ and get out of it, you can get out of it? Do you feel that you can betray the trust another man is bound to always trust you? What do you think you are? Don’t you have learned so shall you sow, so shall you reap? Don’t you know this is a indefinite law, you can’t deny it, action has reaction equal and opposite, law of Karma or Newton’s third law of force?
I saw those people and I see you, they admitted one thing today, I said, “One question that the very essence, the requirement of life is happiness and happiness comes from relaxation, do we know how to relax?”
And father Royal Vatican said, ‘well Yogiji knows how to give people exercises and those breathing exercises and chanting and meditation and he can relax his people, but with our sixteen cups of cough, we do not know how’ and he was very honest about it too and this time I have been mid, mid, mid-West the Bible belt of America up to Atlanta I touched and I come back in Los Angeles and I am willing to sit and confront you today. I feel we have done tons of investment in you to be what you are and you are very far-out and do the whole people, honest to God.
Other side of the mountain is very risky, very dark because it is, it is totally built and lived in a kind of a scene what is called is paranoia and I have today realized why Guru Gobind Singh said, live fearlessly, Nirbhao, why Guru Nanak said that word, Nirbhao, Nirvair, you have to be Nirbhao, you have to be fearless to become not to have vengeance, otherwise a fearful man will think of vengeance and manipulation and all those areas. Nirvair, have no vengeance against anybody.
The qualification of a human being or what is called is the basic essentials, you can look as a human being, granted, you can identify yourself as a human being, granted, you can establish yourself as a human being, granted, but do you live as a human being? Before you act do you take care of other man sentiments, his conditions, his personality into account? Does your fiber tolerate that you insult everybody you feel like, you insecure everybody you feel like, you lay your tantrums on anybody you feel like and you can get out of it just like nothing has happened? Can you be that insensitive?
This insensitivity has gone into our kind of genes, into our fiber. Why there is a insensitivity? Why there is a fear and why there is unhappiness? Because we are highly selfish and selfish person is very finite, very limited, all he and she thinks is about themself. They only want to use other people for themself, their relationship, their love, their friendship, their talking, the whole thing is based on one thing and one thing alone. How much blood I can suck out of this being? And how long I can live on this person? I can assure you that’s not a basic human character. If you want to be loved, if you want to be respected, if you want to be comfortable, you got to do one thing, you have to start living as a human being.
Difficulties, pain, misfortune all this is your paranoia, they don’t exist. Today I realized my God, this four, five hundred people are sitting here, they don’t know a thing, within ten years, they will be all shift to Miami Beach to stare out of those glass houses. But one day I can figure it out those graveyards which were sitting there in Florida or in other areas, out of those graveyards living human beings, you can see one day they were young and beautiful. They knew every lush of life, if you know every lush of life, how you end up there, I was very sad also to read that newspaper that (?) Gargo, what is her name was?
Students: (—-)
YB: Now lives alone, makes her own toast, butter it herself and sometime she takes tea because… Without milk because it is not in time and she tried to throw social parties but could not find lot of people coming so, she finally stopped it. Do you know those days, you all must be remembering when she was a actress or a heroine in any of the film, nobody will care for rest of the cost get in, queue in you know, that’s enough. What happened to these personalities? Why people built beautiful Temples after the name of the saints and worship and burn candles even after the death they have gone why? Because those could element, their element could join with the universal element and that connection between the universal element and this element today is a hope for all of you.
So whenever you meditate on that person or touch that person or relate to that person, that connection happens. That’s why, they are not, don’t call them very superior being because then that your another word you are telling God made some superior, some inferior, no that’s not true. Some people broke those walls, those barriers. All people do not love them, you can only love a man of a God, if you don’t have an ego, I can guarantee you that. You can use the word love and play the game, you can play the game to fit into your ego and your personality and your limited consciousness but you can’t swim with that person into the universal frequency and you cannot enjoy and grasp the entire whole being that beauty, that bewitching beauty and towards that end Guru Nanak started working, now I realize why ten Gurus and why ten people have to put in their whole thing into it, why not one prophet, one Guru would have been enough?
No, there are lot of facets, lot of aspects of life, which has to be completed. Seven year old child could stand and be bricked alive and say Wahe Guru, it has to happen, it has to take that many years to reach to the tenth master Guru Gobind Singh and then give birth to a child which can say, Nirbhao, I am fearless. Death can’t do anything to me, nothing can do anything to me, God is with me and that is the responsibility of you all. Can you understand how successful Guru Gobind Singhwas as a father? And how Guru Gobind Singh wife was successful as a mother? You forget about the Guru side of the whole thing but just understand them as a parent, as a institute, as a parental institution, how wonderful and successful it was that because from it came those two children, seven and nine, fourteen and sixteen perfect.
I will like to appeal to your rational, your logic human being, have you ever considered in your life that you also have the same chance? What happens is these men of God came and they told us to worship God, we forgot God and we worship it, we started worshipping these men, convenience because that give us a connection. But what we did is after worshipping them we forgot that what they said, it is funny, I was in Atlanta Georgia and I saw that God bless his life Sat Bheer Singh two year old or year and a half, three year something, I do not know exactly his age is. Little guy I mean to say he is not a big man. But you cannot find another alert child of his caliber.
The most beautiful alertness which he represented was perfect and one when his mother said, I said, “But do you use some special technical” and when I was told by my secretary that she is exactly have totally followed the teachings which has been laid down in the past so many years. I said, “Can you ask her to sum them up to just make a consolidated effort so that everybody know what we are talking about?” Because there sits a living intelligent child, God bless him and worse may not happen to him at all ever.
Such a sweet and alert mind because her mother has thought it’s a gift of God and he must be made as a human being of God, that’s all and she has worked, she has not thought, she has to make this piglet, so that she maybe known she was a human pig but gave only two leg piglet out of the, out of a womb and she raised it exactly like that, so that there will be nuisance to the neighbors, nuisance to the home he lives, nuisance to the whole area and when they grow up they become nuisance to the law and order, nuisance to the country, nuisance to the whole world. And when I looked at that skinny woman and I, I just couldn’t say a thing, I mean I was, I mean to say to tell him to not come with us. She said, “Siri Singh Sahib, I want to go with you on this very plane, why don’t you take me, I won’t give you any trouble.”
(Students’ laughter)
It was far-out I couldn’t believe but this what you can say, what you can say, I told Sat Simran, I said, “Let us run otherwise we are going to get emotionally involved and we will get in trouble.”
(Students’ laughter)
Because he knows which button to press and look at me, I mean to say, he can press my button, what he can do for somebody else and we watched him and he was playing with a girl and I watched him and she punched him and he defended himself and punched back and what they, when he got hurt, he wanted to go in a room to cry, he doesn’t want to stand in hallway and shed his tears.
Sat Simran told me a funny thing, Sat Simran gave him a almond or something to eat and it was not the right time and her mother said, “I don’t think he can eat.”
She said, “Yes I know.” And he gave it back. Why not the child should lie down, ‘no mama, why not to I have a cookie, am I not a good Jew, Ibrahim told us to multiply.’
(Students’ laughter)
Couldn’t she lay all those tantrum those sick things, which make the basic culture? I think we are the worst animal race on this planet, we do not do anything, we spoil our own children because we are emotionally insecure, we are mentally corrupt and we have a bankruptcy of moral and we cannot give our children that strength which they need, I think that is why, Guru Gobind Singh came to prove this miracle that there is no miracle, man can evaluate himself, assess himself and can come out with every perfection. Guru Nanak talked to God and Guru Gobind Singh lived in the very spirit of God and proved and I think you all who has to follow that path.
I, I wonder sometime really do you understand sometime when you emotionally misbehave with your children, overprotect them, overfeed them, give them over lease to do wrong. What you actually do? You actually confirm on them a honoring degree of stupidity you want them to be stupid and there is nobody who can be punished for that, you don’t get punished because you old idiots you get away somewhere and you know you already have made up your money and some pension and other things will come through but those people suffer through the steps of walking the way of life. I think we are not in a position to create a superior human being but we are very conveniently we can, we can be perfect human being.
Today it is my experience that any man who can put it a just a honest effort can become graceful human being. I used to have a doubt that perhaps some people are mentally not capable today I am convinced everybody is mentally capable but emotionally not and why not? Because in the culture where we live, we feel if we do not commit mistake, we do not commit blunders, we do not create chaos, nobody will care for us. We are not convinced that righteousness, truth and decency has any value. I think our motivation is because Mafianos are very powerful, let us be a Mafiano, so we start our little Mafia, wherever we are and this ego and power struggle and in our power control, we end up as a mess.
Look to the reality of Godhood and watch in you, how much divine is near you, I was answering a question and they asked a question, “What best thing can happen to you today, which can be very pleasant, what best?”
And I said, “The best thing today which is happening to me is I am alive. Today there is nothing better happening to me than alive, today I am alive, I have lived today, it’s wonderful.”
“And how your children and you can love somebody, who can tell you God is omnipresent, omniscient, omni-powerful and then you tell him look but you can only find Him in such and such place through such and such way only.”
You will say, “What this man is talking about? I mean to say can you be not more stupid than that, you can do some better stupidity than this.” On one side, you say, God is omniscient, omnipresent, God is beautiful, God is life, God is experience. On the other hand you say, but this but is the main problem of human life. It is my very deep and sincere request that all of us who are trying to be something, let us understand that this game cannot continue.
3HO will serve people, it will continue way of life because it guarantees people to be healthy, happy and holy but those who are in 3HO and are continuously playing games, I think they should better think of themself. Because they are bleeding us, they are not allowing us to expand they are creating a situation, which is very saturated. I am not saying they are not beautiful people, I am not saying they are not beautiful people created by God, I am not saying they are not wonderful people, whom we don’t need but for the time being, we can’t use them. I think this shuttle service has no value and in your very life this shuttle service has no shuttle service has any kind of life. This you cannot create emotions to commotions and create a pattern and neurosis, it’s not healthy. You got to learn one thing, you got to be intelligent and intelligence doesn’t come near that man, who is not faithful.
The very essence, the very lay out of intelligence is you can faithfully present yourself and if you don’t have faith, if you have not lived it, it is not right out of you, how can you present it? That’s why your words are phony they are shallow, they are powerless, they are spiritless that’s why they don’t work at all. That’s why your prayers are not answered. Whole cosmos guarantees one thing, entire vibrant life guarantees one thing, entire happening guarantees one thing, that life is happiness. But this dragging down the situation is that is what the problem is. If this is true in scriptures, now I am using the word if, though I know it is true because you have shaken me so well by repeating the blunders, that in seven years by word of God consciousness changes, that means your patterns of life must change and if you are crossing that seven year limit, it means you love your pattern so deeply, you have loaded yourself so deeply with them that you have forgotten that there is a possibility that you can give yourself a chance and I believe and so the scriptures confirm it that every person can give himself and herself a chance.
I sincerely believe in the very core of my heart that even most misfortune person can become the most fortunate person provided, there is a very big provision, provided you desire to be so. The very desirelessness we talk about, here we are urging and longing for a desire, we need to desire, we want a desire.
I remember about three years ago a woman came to me and she said, “I have come to see you to hear from you the truth, give me some truth so that I can know and fulfill my soul. My soul is hungry for the truth.”
And I said, “Lady, you are not ready.”
She said, “No, no, no, no, don’t misunderstand me, I am so eager.”
I said, “Is that so, you have come in search of truth.” And then I started talking to her and in ten minutes I knew she wanted to runaway. I have talked to many people, when I talk to them and I talk to them the truth. They don’t want to hear, they feel trapped, but dear friends in 8.4 million life cycles at the rate of millions of year of the what you call it ray years, you have blessed yourself with the possibility to be a human being and what it matters, if you have the entire world in the palm of your hand at the cost of your soul.
And I tell you a story, there was a man and very beautiful con intelligent man and he conned somebody and conned so well that he took away the wealth of a person and totally legalized it. So having establishing himself, he took the money and wanted to go to a holy man and give him a present and this man of God said, “Thank you very much and for this present may that soul be blessed, which has retained and sustained itself through the total pain of deceit.”
He said, “Sir, I don’t do any deceit my soul is very free.”
He said, “No, no, no, I am not blessing your soul, I am blessing the soul of the person whom this present belongs to.”
He said, “This present belongs to me.”
He said, “You are a carrier, it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the someone who earned it.”
“Sir I earned it.”
He said, “No you only deceived it to your side, you didn’t earn it. You have not earned it and I can’t bless you for this, I am blessing the one.”
He said, “You are blessing him?”
He said, “Look my child, he is victorious and you are a loser because you took away from his, his Earth and he turned himself to ether. I see him in the realm of God consciousness sitting much higher than me and as he through you has send me this present, I want to thank him.”
It opened up his heart he realized that these Earthly games have to have a balance with ether also. This Earthly desires are good, I am not against it but you have to have a desire of God also, you have a desire to be kind also, you have a desire to be gentleman also, those are also desires. Not how can you con somebody, how you can strip somebody, how you can just make a person totally dead, these are not the desires, which will make you happy.
You have to learn in your life to relax. Because the source of happiness is based on relaxation and relaxation must come to you through your inner strength and it is my deep understanding that now I can say it with a clear consciousness that how sick a person maybe, if he has desire to earn Godhood, he can earn but also it is my deepest understanding, if you just give somebody Godhood, he may not be in a position to retain it. Because a foolish person may not value the diamond and may think it is a piece of glass but if you take that piece of glass to a jeweler who has the feeling that this is a diamond, he may pay you lot of money just for, just looking at that beautiful piece.
And that is exactly the story at the time of Guru Nanak. Mardana was very hungry, he said, “Lord, look now the pain not only has come to the heart but it has gone to the head and hunger pain those who know to suffer with hunger pain, they know what it is.”
So Guru Nanak gave him a big ruby and said, “Mardane, just go in the town few miles from here there’s a town, make it there and this piece of stone beautiful, you just show it to people and perhaps somebody can give you some food and you can enjoy yourself.”
So Mardana said, “Thank you Lord.” He picked up that stone, tight in his hand ran. So he first he went to a person, who was selling these white daikon radishes, eggplants those kind of goodies, vegetables, very good stall and other side there was beautiful fruit. So he said, “I have got this beautiful precious stone, if you can give food in turn for me.”
He looked at the stone and he said, “Yeah, hah those leafs of daikon radishes are sitting there you can get them.”
He said, “No daikon radish, no fruit?”
He said, “Oh no, no, no, fruit this side, you don’t look at, this side totally ban.”
He said, “No, no, no that’s not, give my stone to me.”
So he took the stone, he went to a place of a person of a Halwahe one who sell sweetmeats and channi and all that eatables perfect, you who those who have gone to India you know that what halwai is, so he showed him the stone, he said, “Yeah, look good I can use him in balancing the weigh, what do you want out of it?”
He said, “Just anything.”
He said, “I can give you few sweetmeats, just few.”
He said, “Nothing more?”
He said, “You can just have few pooris and I think that is maximum. Don’t ask me more or take your stone back, I don’t want to deal with you.”
He said, “My God Guru Nanak told me it is very precious, when these guys are not even giving me one full man meal what precious is this.” So he said, “Let me go to the jeweler and show him whether the stone is real or precious or not.” So he get to this jeweler shop and he said, “I have got this stone and I want to ask you, can you tell me what can be the price of it.”
The jeweler looked at it and he looked at it and he looked at it and he looked at it and he said, “Oh, nobody can buy it, it is priceless.”
He said, “But what you can give to me?”
He said, “I can give you hundred rupees just for showing it to me. You keep this stone with you, I don’t need the stone, I can’t buy it but I will give you one hundred rupees.” And in those days in one hundred rupee you can buy a one shop of fruit, another shop of halwahi, plus other shop of a vegetable, man all total. In three shops may not be worth eighty rupees. He said, “No, I will give you one hundred rupee because in my lifetime I always thought I can see that kind of stone who is the owner of it?”
He said, “My master.”
He said, “Where he lives?”
He said, “Outside.”
He said, “Don’t worry, are you hungry?”
He said, “Yes.”
He said, “Come with me.” He fed him, he clothed him, he gave him a bath, he did all the service and then he said, “Let us go and see I like to see your master, who has that kind of stones.”
So when he came out and he saw a saintly man sitting in a deep meditation he knew what he is. Learned knows the value of life and ignorant ignores the very value of life for which one has come to the Earth. What is ignorant? Ignorant ignores the very value of life, but the learned knows and lives it, experiences, enjoys it, fulfill himself. This aspect of life in reality we see it in our daily chores but we need the strength. It is that strength which can change ourself and there is no way, there is no miracle that you can have that strength without your Sadhana. These three lines are precious, you may not take care of them but I will repeat them for you, Sadhana Aradhana and Prabhupati, they don’t need explanation.
Sadhana, Aradhana whatever your Sadhana has been given to you do that, Aradhana mean doing the Sadhana and Prabhupati, Prabhu means God, Pati means the master, the swami of God. Therefore, whenever in your life you want to become great then you will take that path which reaches the greatness and the first symptom is that you will adapt your characteristic and your behavior, your personality and your environments to do Sadhana and once you determine yourself that Sadhana is my way of life, then Aradhana is complete and then God must fulfill the very promise.
‘Jho Simare Gobind, Gobind Sev Kamaye. Jho Simrae Gobind, Gobind Sev Kamaye Tein Khe Ghar Lakshmi Neith Neithyaye.’
That’s a very beautiful simple couplet those who meditate and chant and repeat the name of God, God serves them and in their house the Goddess of wealth comes again and again because to such people, opportunities, prosperity, happiness, value, completion of desire become meaningful and to the others all fulfillment becomes meaningless.
Tonight in this series where I am trying to take you that you can enrich yourself, you can be a living human being with a living human experience. You all can do one thing and it is same thing that you stop looking at your past, if you go on the side of the mountain and you look on the deeper side the very fact of your looking at the deeper side may pull you right deep into it and lot of accidents have happened that way but if you look to the top and you know the mark and you make it that is what life is about.
Dear folks, life won’t come again and again, these games you are playing, they will play you out. To become adult in your spiritual life, not in your physical life, you have to one day decide, that’s it. I am, I am, the day you decide this, that is the most fortunate day of your life and of your spiritual (?). Let us do this meditation.
… Inhale, Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari…
(YB & Students chanting, ‘Hari Hari Hari Hari…’)
(Chanting stops)
Don’t become very fast, now listen. Patience pays. Listen to the note and the tune which I am meditating and chanting and then you can create that sound yourself, first is a higher powerful tone, second is female soft sophisticated tone, both are very important. Hari Hari Hari Hari…
(YB & Students chanting, ‘Hari Hari Hari Hari…’)
Side B
(Chanting continues)
(Chanting stops)
Inhale, stretch your hands up please, stretch, stretch powerfully and exhale. Inhale again and please stretch, give your spine a chance, exhale. Inhale again and open your fingers wide and stretch as powerfully as you can and relax. Relax, relax, relax, you did it for eleven minutes, you can recognize if you can do it for a very longtime, it can bring swift and powerful change, mantra is very powerful, so is the possibility. May the longtime…
(Students singing, ‘May the longtime sunshine upon you…’)
(Song stops)
Creator, this congregation has been created by you through all these creatures whom you have directed to come. Those who have found Thy will have come, others couldn’t and you have blessed the ways of these creatures, oh Unknown one through this known action, fulfill their heart, give them health, happiness, wealth, prosperity. So that out of their radiance they can glow and shine in Thy name, may this day bring us to Thee forever, ever and ever. Sat Nam.
(Students singing, ‘When things are down and darkest…’)
(Song stops)
