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Excerpts from a lecture by Yogi Bhajan on March 12, 1989
Meditation is not what you do in the morning; that's a practice. Meditation is the result of that practice.
We cannot survive through adversity without meditation. Meditation is a process through which you take your total self, your pride, your ego, and your spirit, and you put them on the line. Meditation is not closing your eyes. Birds close their eyes. Do they meditate? That’s not meditation. When the heavenly forces move at the command of the individual, that is called meditation.
When you are dead, the soul leaves you. When the soul leaves you, the soul’s purpose also leaves. You look like you are the same person, as beautiful as you are today, but the soul is not there. At that time, we put you on a pile of wood and light a fire underneath. There are some who are put on that funeral pyre and they burn to ashes, but out of the ashes their soul lives, like the phoenix that rises out of the ashes, because their words remain as their legacy. Their words stand.
Just remember, in your life there are three things: param, karam and dharam. Param means doubt. Karam means action and reaction. Dharam means when you have absolutely no action or reaction: at that time the Universe will serve you and you'll become a watcher. You may need two million things in your life, but you cannot go after two million things. You have to wait and let two million things come to you. Guru Nanak says, "Don't go out and leave your home in a search, because when God comes to your address, you will not be there.”
We all live a lie when we live in param. Living in param, living in doubt, is living a lie. Simple English. There are no two ways about it. So long as there is doubt, it's a lie. When you live in karam, it’s like living on a battlefield, with action and reaction. You will never be real. It's a strangulating struggle that goes on and on and on. There's no peace. In karam there is no peace—just action and reaction, equal and opposite. Newton's third law.
Then comes dharam, when there’s no doubt. There is a long history of the excellence of the human when he lives in dharam. When living in dharam, man becomes God. With the meditative mind of dharam, man has the faculty to conquer death and become deathless.
Do you know what love is? Love is consistent memory. With each breath it comes; it lives; it exists in you.
Body is the shell experience. Mind is the perpetual experience. Soul is the real experience. As you remember the earthly father, we, the Khalsa, Those who are pure of heart. remember our heavenly father who taught us one thing: deathlessness. Akal moorat, ajoonee saibhang, gur prasaad (image of deathlessness, never having been born, self-illumined, gift of the Guru). Understand that line and you will understand deathlessness. Deal with everything in your life today with the attitude of deathlessness. See what happens.
What you are collecting, what you are going after, what you are seeking, shall not work. What will work? When you will become as nothing, you shall see everything, you shall feel everything, you shall know everything, you shall command everything. That's the law.
Recognize and understand that your pranas are going away. You have limited prana—shakti. God’s power in manifestation. You don't have unlimited shakti. Don’t waste it on the body. Don’t waste it on the mind’s games. Do something for the soul. You are a part of that sun Shakti, that solar Shakti, that prana Shakti. You don't have to freak out. You don't have to do anything. Just feel the light in you. Feel the deathlessness in you. And feel it deeply. If nobody has awakened you, nobody has abused you, that is your privilege. If somebody has awakened you, somebody has called you a name, somebody has challenged you, that is also your supreme privilege. Face the challenge. It is the enemy that gives you strength. Friends don't. Friends are with you; you are with your friends. If you do not understand that life is there to challenge you on every breath of life, then you do not understand living. If you do not challenge your life yourself, somebody else will challenge it.
I don't want to tell you what to do and what not to do. I just want to tell you: Thought is the most powerful thing in the world. There is nothing more powerful than thought. Everything starts from thought. Your intellect has the absolute capacity to release one thousand thoughts per wink of the eye, so you have no dearth of thoughts. Just create your own thought, "I am deathless. I’ll see things deathlessly." And you'll become deathless. This is the faculty of the Khalsa. This is the faculty of purity. Purity belongs to God. Victory belongs to God. And you belong to God. Wahe Guru ji ka Khalsa: Purity belongs to Wahe Guru. Mantra of ecstasy expressing the magnificence of God. Wahe Guru ji ki Fateh: Victory belongs to Wahe Guru. Why? Because you belong to Wahe Guru. And those who meditate and chant Wahe Guru, those who understand that Infinity and grace and ecstasy of Wahe Guru, those who want to enjoy that, well, where is the happiness? It is in that thought. In that deathlessness.
Just understand, you will lose all the happiness in your life because of the fear of death. You are afraid, and a man in fear and phobia has no intuitive sensitivity. It's simple psychology. What I am saying to you and sharing with you is—a thought. Make your own profile. Spend only half an hour on yourself. Go today and make your own deathlessness profile of activity, and see what it does for you. See what it can do for you. See how much experience of self you gain out of it. There is nothing more I can tell you.
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Originally Published in the Fall 2003 issue of Aqarian Times Magazine on "Death and Deathlessness". Reprinted with permission.
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