Yogi Bhajan Lecture Archive
Lecture by :
Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogi Ji
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Lecture on: 02/14/1988
Category: Gurdwara
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Public

Dharma within the Dharma

WAHE GURU JI KA KHALSA, WAHE GURU JI KI FATEH!

Subject we are talking about today is called, "Dharma within the Dharma." I'm not going to deny that totally in the world at large there are 22 religions. And my own experience of study is that every religion is better than every other. But to me religion is just nothing but a shopping center & man is just like a customer. There are so many religions, so many churches, so many synagogues, so many holy men, then why we are suffering? Why we have not resolved our pain, our inadequacies? To me it looks like we have so many dentists and we still have a toothache because there are a lot of cavities and we are unable to fill them.

One side is that we come Sunday to the Gurdwara, we listen to the words, we get charged up, and then we go out and do the same weird things which we were doing yesterday. And mostly if there is not a community pressure or something like that, we don't even come to Gurdwara, or to a temple, or to a synagogue. We rise in the ambrosial hour for a while and then, after that it becomes very heavy. It's not desirable any more.

Why the spirituality or the spirit doesn't have a priority, when we live by it, when this is the only thing which keeps us alive? Why our spirit suffocates? It is never paid any attention. That's why the reason is that we have such a deep depression, constantly cold, very heavy depression. And we have a very heavy sizzling anger. It's a very strange thing. We have a very deep cold depression, we have a very sizzling hot anger in the personality and you know, when you put ice over the fire, what happens? They both make a lot of mess. It's not a very real situation or condition.

Human condition is challenged from day one and today when we have a man like Guru Nanak who came and who totally penetrated through the religious hodge podge of religious pathway and just put a straight road...man is so complex by his nature of intellectual study that he even rejected Guru Nanak. He even did not understand his simple ways of science of reality. He did not understand what actually Guru Nanak is saying. What Guru Nanak said was is very simple. That there is but One God which has created the whole universe and all of you are made in God. So therefore don't rub against each other. Live in peace and harmony.

But our individual nature is that we want to look prettier than the other person, richer than the other person, more intelligent than the other person. The funny part is that we want to look better than the other person, but we do not look better to ourself! That's the main thing in the world. We do not get up in the morning and talk to ourselves. We do not relate to ourselves. Now, we are the one who is going to know the truth and live the truth. We! I have to get up and be truthful to myself. Now just understand... if I get up and I'm not truthful to myself, to my own rhythm, to my own reality, to my own constitution, to my own projection, my own facets are not real to me, how can the world around me mean anything to me? So what I do? I make up and fake up. And the net result is I am as dead I was. Because there's no basic connection between me, within me, and within myself.

I have talked to all kinds of religious people. Some are way high over there. They don't even talk about it. They so have found God as God is like a chocolate you have got in the mouth, it melts in them. And there are those who just play so humble, "I am just dust of the dust of the dust of the dust." And they are really dust. There's no problem about it. But they just use that phenomenon to just fool around. And then I wonder that God made us a human being and we have a human value, and what happened to that value? When we are going to recognize that value? When we are going to be proud of that value? When we are going to project that value? I understand that religion needs money and big gurdwaras, and temples and synagogues, and God knows, churches. And they must come out of the money of the people. Therefore religion used a very powerful fear complex. "If you won't do this, this wrong will happen to you." Now basically everything wrong has happened to us to begin with.
It's not something more wrong is going to happen, except we will lose a little bit of money and that's all way of it.

I remember once a person came and brought me $108.00 and I said, "What for?" And she said, "I want you to pray for me." I said, "Well, you want to hire me?" She said, "Is it not that I am not supposed to give you this?" I said, "Give me anything, that's not the problem. You give me out of love and affection, that's fine. But if you want to hire me for your prayer, then it is ten thousand dollars a minute. So if you have that kind of money, then let us make a deal." She said, "I don't have that kind of money." I said, "Then I am not for hiring." She said, "Well, I am in desperate need of a prayer by you." I said, "Well, you pray and I'll watch." And she sat down and did the prayer. And I said, "No, this is not right. Just pray to God, feeling God within you. When you pray feeling God is outside of you, you are the most stupid person wasting time. There's no God outside of you! The God is in you! Go inside you and pray within you." Fortunately or unfortunately, whatever
it was, whatever she prayed, it happened. So next day she came and she said, "Now I can pay you." I said, "What for?" She said, "At least you taught me how to pray." I said, "Still your hiring nature is not gone. Still you want to hire somebody to do your work." I said, "My dear, your gardening garden is YOUR garden. Life is like a garden. You have to become your own gardener of this life and whatever you grow in this garden, you have to enjoy it."

Life is like a karma, it is like a garden in which we, through this karma, grow and organize a huge or a small garden, and then we enjoy it. Nobody else has the right to enjoy it. By the way, when people go by the freeway or highway, or by the lane way, whatever it is, they see a beautiful home and a garden around, they appreciate it. It is that appreciation which is a prayer. That's a much stronger prayer. None of you understand prayer. You sit down and you pray, or you stand up and you pray. No, my dear. When you walk in your life like a temple, your very radiance is appreciated by people and that appreciation is that prayer. Because if like an artist you make something and somebody comes to the gallery and he says, "Wow, what a wonderful thing!" ...that is what "Wahe Guru" is. When a Sikh of the Guru walks around, decoratedly dressed up in the grace of the Guru and when he talks, walks, feels, deals, understands, and projects to the humans and becomes like a kind of
soothing hope, a tower of hope, a tower of life, an institution of greatness of God, that consulation to other people becomes the prayer for that person.

Here, today, we'll do the prayer. It's a practise. This we will practise to pray. But real prayer will be when you'll go from here to home, how you live, how you live your day, how you live your breath, EACH breath time, 15 times a minute, God sends us the prana and we live. And those 15 times minutes are very precious minutes. And you divide your constitutional projection to all the people. In the world at large, there is no temple. YOU are the temple. When you feel God in you, you become alive, divine, great. That is the Dharma within the Dharma. Outside of you, nothing exists. It is your psychoanalytical misunderstanding, it's your fear, it's your curiosity that you go out and you try to find God. I don't think God lives anywhere except within you. And I don't think there is any more richness than the richness within you. You have to be culturally, socially, economically, personally, individually and as a family unit, have to become very spiritual. The spirit with you is to be multiple facet of God,
divinity. You cannot let that go. If you think by make up and by dresses and by jewels and by ornamentation, you can look pretty....yes, temporarily you are right, but it won't last.

We have a soul, all of us we have a body, we have a mind, we have a soul. Our soul is totally in sleep. Innocent like a baby, we never wake it up. It lives there in some corner. Our mind, it was given to us like a servant, but it has overtaken the whole household. Really! Our mind now is not a servant, it has become a master. It tells US what to do. It creates problems for us. It was given to us to SOLVE problems. It is like a servant we hired, he started telling, "Wash dishes like this, cook food like that, lay it on the table, I'll eat first and see it is tasty or not, and then you people can eat." That's how mind has become. It was supposed to be under my control, do my chores, do my errands, do my job. Now it makes ME to do it.

My body was given to me to bear with me the reflection, the projection, the radiation and the existence of God. Instead of that, my existence is based on how big a house I have got, how big a God I have got... not that having a house is a problem, or having a car is a problem. Have everything! Use all the blessed facilities of the world. But don't get deeply so involved in them that that becomes your personality. Have a personality and have everything that you need, but let your personality be not projected by things. It should be projected by your own reality. One thing, your own reality, your own manners, your own behavior patterns, your own thinking, your own attitude of gratitude must project.

So in Sikh Dharma, there's a one condition. EVERYTHING belongs to the Guru, and we all live as a caretaker, and that's very difficult for some people to understand and live and be so. We treat our children that they are like piece of furniture and we own them. No! Our children are a gift to us from God, they are the property of God, and they should be made to understand God, to whom they belong, and they should understand divinity right now when they are young and pure and beautiful and innocent. Don't wait until they become crook #1, depressed #2 angry #3, and totally freaked out #4, and obnoxious #5, and on and on, and on and on and on.

In New Mexico I have very, very, very, very divine girl of mine and she's pretty. And one day she said, "I am pretty." I said, "Yeah, okay. You are pretty. I understand." She said, "What can I do to prove it to YOU that I am pretty?" I said, "Just don't be angry with me, I am an old man, you know? There's no need to be angry. But you want to tell me you are pretty?" She said, "Yes, I am pretty." I said, "Wash dishes in this kitchen, that's your job." And she started washing dishes. And one day she said, "I am washing dishes..." I said, "Not angrily. Very affectionately." And one day I went in and found a dish and I said, "This is not prettily washed. Pretty girl washes dishes pretty. That is pretty." She said, "Well, why I am doing this?" I said, "Because you were never told how to wash dishes. Those who do not wash dishes, they do not value dishes and mind you, if you break one dish while washing, I'll break your head, and it's not going to be pretty. So wash dishes,
see they are washed pretty." Well, to give her a family teaching, I just brought everybody to be invited and I said, "Okay, my guests are coming tonight. You dress up very well, and see they are served very well. See they are entertained very well. See that the food is fantastic. See the table is done right." And one day she said, "Why I am doing it?" I said, "Because you are pretty. Pretty people do pretty things. How small they are, how big they are, how minor they are, how major they are, if you think you are pretty, then everything has to be pretty. PERIOD!"

If you think you are a Sikh of the Guru, EVERYTHING has to be for the sake of the Guru. That is where Sikh Dharma starts, that is where Sikh Dharma ends. It is a very selfish thing. If you dedicate mentally and personally everything to the Guru, then God comes and takes care of you. That's the inter-balanced relationship.

So we don't love things in that way. We feel that by ownership by our ego, we may not own anything. No... being a caretaker in the name of the Guru, we actually ask the God to take care of our things. I feel the reality of being a Sikh has to be recognized within ourselves. That is why Guru gave us four dictates: Bana, bani, seva, simran. Let us dress up and fashion ourselves to tell the whole world that we belong to the Guru. Let us speak the bani, the words that people should recognize that we speak the Guru's language. Let us serve everybody, those who serve and those who don't, so we can represent the Guru. And let us do simran, let us thank God, let us repeat His Name, that God has given us this virtue in this life and this time to serve.

WAHE GURU JI KA KHALSA, WAHE GURU JI KI FATEH!

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- END OF TRANSCRIPT -
02/14/88 YOGI BHAJAN, 1988


Above Article Copyright © Yogi Bhajan 2002. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.



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