THE SIRI SINGH SAHIB LECTURES AT THE YOGA CENTER (LA #558) (Guru Gaddee Day address) These four meditation classes which I am trying to teach, the purpose is not that I want to make you yogis or something, but my concept is very well settled. Human works in his life out of fear. When you grow up you start dating... you think you will never get married. When you grow up you want to collect things and money, and you want to become rich. When your old age comes you fear you may not be taken care of. We are mostly guided by misery and fear. And misery needs company. I don't care what anybody says and how they say it. Let me say it one thing and if you'll just put it in your mind... Let's put it this way. When you are in your life as you are... doesn't matter who you belong to, what philosophy you have, what you want to say and what you really want to feel... but as a person you are afraid always that you will be lonely, you will be rejected, you will be unloved, you will be poor, you won't have meals tomorrow. If you are married, what will you do for your children, what will you do for this, what will you do for that? Nobody acts out of love. Look, we are 5 billion people and I am very regretfully saying this, that we don't even have an iota of understanding what God is all about. We have no consequences to even face, no story to even tell. And God does it all, but we feel we do it all. The life is based on insecurity, fear. When you are insecure and you are fearful, that's reasonable. That's okay. That's animal. Animal is always insecure and very fearful and when he's hungry he goes for a meal. Even the lion, the king of the beasts, he likes to make a kill and eat it every 2, 3, 4 days. So, it is in our self. Now, I can be misunderstood that I am a religious man and I am a yogi and I am talking. No! I am a business man and I make my money and pay my taxes... live my life much more normal than you live, and don't expect much. What I found out in my life, in 20 years... I came, I built up all this what I built up, but I gave and gave... and I give and give, and I try to find out, does somebody realize? Answer was "no." There's no horizon. There's no Infinity. There's no horizon. There's no vastness which a human should have. And then there are meditations, and then there are happy groups and groups of satans. Yeah, you walk out of the window, you'll find 200 yogis and 300 groups and 600 teachings and 800 religions and their branches and priests and padres... swamis and all that whole thing, but not a single person can take away the fear of the man! Isn't it a shame? The concept of life... when it is based on fear... where happiness can be? I don't want to dig into your bank accounts, your political power or your religious convictions... I have nothing to do with all that. It is just a fundamental elementary situation, and that is that everybody is afraid and acts out of fear. So long you act out of fear, you have to compromise. What fear does to you? Your range becomes short term. Your thinking becomes short term. Your concept becomes narrow. You become a bootstrapper. You just want to survive. And that means survival NOW. And that makes every human stupid. Period. You don't have to ask for a certificate. Because when vast range contracts to a small range, do you understand the impact? Do you understand this room has a raise. If it is brought down to the size of this bench on which I am sitting, what will happen to you all? Do you have any idea? So what happens is that our goal with our children is short-term; our goal with our mates is short-term; and goal in our relationships is short-term. Goal in our love is short-term. Everything is short. Small. We talk big. Let us see. Politically on the 8th of November we had an election. Let's put it simply. Let's talk about our national strategy, all right? We are Americans. "Read my lips, I'm not going to raise taxes." Right? That's all it was. And nobody wants to pay taxes, so they voted this guy in. If it is true that our national debt is whatever it is, it comes to 28 thousand dollars per person, born this minute. He carries it. At a rate of 10% that is $2,800. So per year each one of you...forget about taxes, you pay national debt interest per individual, whether you earn or not, $2,800. And not a single American wants to recognize it. Are we educated? No. Are we real? No. Are we a nation? No. Are we Americans? No. So what do we do? Short term arrangements, write hot checks on the treasury, print more notes and steal it from here, steal it from there. Make ourselves feel good. And don't we all do it at home, the same thing? What Reagan did or what Bush is going to do, or Dukakis is going to do, is same thing. That's national. On an international level we help everybody in the world and we get kicked out. Philippine which we almost made to live, now raised the staying of our ships there. Can you believe? They should pay for their own defense. We pay them just to be there. What a wonderful nation. Isn't it marvelous? And our children are dying without medical care, our people are hungry, there is a homeless problem, and we are sending help to the Contra Rebels. You may not be interested in these political figures or in these news, but that shows our behavior. It's not politics. It's a national thinking. Short-term patchwork. Somebody gets scared, he works it. In our home, the same thing. We work out of fear. There is no fearlessness. And we talk of God. I go to every church, I meet a lot of holy men. Before I got ill I started... before this meeting of peace, Isis, they started doing it... I started calling in the end of my courses all religious denominations, Christians, Hindus, whatever, in the town. They all came. And they all said, "We are willing to meet, we are willing to unite, we are willing to discuss. But what about our turf?" I never understood first of all what they are trying to talk about. So there was an interdenominational priest. I asked him, "Everywhere I go for one year, I invite them. I spend money. I give them good cup of tea. We want to just talk and communicate and they talk about turf." He said, "There is a problem." I said, "What is the problem?" "They think you are very clever man. You will take Hindus, Christians, and all the Muslims, anybody in this country, and you will convert them." I said, "It is a fair country. I convert them, they convert me. Something is okay." He said, "No, you do not understand. You go and teach, and you charge and you earn and you pay taxes. You have a different system. Here if there is nobody in the congregation, that bucket goes out, that comes back empty, and church doesn't get painted for two years." It's the dependability. Church has become dependent on the congregation. It is upside down. Actually the congregation should depend on church. Student should depend on the teacher, not teacher should depend on the students. Stupid is that teacher who depends on students. What student can do? Wood should depend on the artist or the carpenter what it should be. Not carpenter should depend on the wood. In our life we have counselors, we pay them, they counsel us. And you know what is counseling? Lie down on a sofa and start talking your story and the person starts doing, "Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh." It's a mantra. He does, "Huh. Huh. Yeah. Uh huh. Okay. Huh. Yeah. More." He does like this. And after all, in 45 minutes, person gets exhausted, he feels he has let it all out, and next week. That's what we have become. Give me one counselor who says, "You stupid idiot. Why you did this? And how dare to you do it? What is this? This is your subconscious. This is your conscious. This is your top, your bottom, your legs are out, this is this, you are naked, you drop dead!" Is there anybody who can do that? Give me that. (Sangat: You do.) Oh, no, well....me....ha ha ha. You know, I did my PhD not for charging money and running and clicking the watch. You know my theory is very simple. My life is very simple, my theory is very simple, my visit to America is very simple. I didn't come in this country to become rich and famous. That's not my idea. I believe in the creation of God. I believe man should be as God created him. I'm not a Sikh because the religion is great. I interpret the religion. I don't care. Sikhs don't like me. I'm a head of the religion. Can you believe there is a head of the religion whom they don't like? Because my conception and my concept and my experience is my personal concept and experience. I was just talking this afternoon... you can read anything in a book and you can know anything you want. You know people with knowledge are more stupid than people who don't know anything? Because they know and they think that's it. They are not going to act. They are not. People don't act. When I go to the airplane and I see somebody with this thick book and going through the pages, I just pray for that person's eyes. Now how stupid a man can be that he's flying 33,000 feet up, and he's killing his eyes? While driving, while flying, in ANY movement, you are not supposed to use your eyes for any concentrated purpose. It's damaging. Then eye glaucoma... tamamoma, yamamoma, whatever... 20 diseases and this and that. Who can tell anybody anything these days? Can anybody say, "You are not supposed to do it and DON'T!" Do you know that every evening you have to have a drink? You have to go to movies, you have to do something? Because you have not trained your butts to sit on them. You can't. You don't have nerves. Everybody promised there will be no drugs. I do not agree. There shall be drugs and flood of it. There shall be divorces and flood of it. There shall be a lot of law and order problems and nobody can stop it in America because you don't understand: Americans have lost their nerve. The itch doesn't make any sense except pain... and a pained person can act any way he wants. We act out of fear and pain. Tragedy was not that much. Tragedy started when we started accepting it. I won't name the state official, but that state official is next to the governor, very high state official. I met him. And he said, "It is my special day. I am very honored you came." I said, "Good." "So, I'd like to introduce you to my family. This is my first wife and this is her husband. This is my second wife and this is her husband. This is my third wife and her husband. This is my wife and I am her husband." I cracked up. That's his family. He has divorced thrice, and all those three are married and all those three, six people were at this house with his children and with their children. And what to do? You know why? We don't meditate. We don't meditate. We hesitate to meditate and we don't have nerves. And when eventuality comes, we are struck by calamity or challenge or anything. We don't know how to deal with it. So we have become reactive. Reactive human is just a two legged animal. Forget about his make-up and forget about his titles and forget about his degrees, and forget about his profession and his religion and his grace and his status. Period. An animal reacts. A human is rational... consolidatedly rational. And the angel in us is creative. We are three. Beast, man and angelic angel. Higher self, lower self, middle self. Is there any treatment to it? Is there any way out? Yes, there is a way out. That you have to have the nerve, you have to have the guts. You have to have the strength. First of all, you have to be noble and then have the honor to protect your own nobility. You know, you don't have to do anything for me. I don't have to do anything for you. Not at all. You don't have to do anything for the world. World has not to do for you. You have to do everything...look how simple this world is. You have to do everything for yourself and then maintain it, protect it. I'll tell you the story of a rich man. He came in this country, became rich and rich, and rich... very rich. One day we were sitting. He said, "You seem to be well to do, but you seem to be happy." I said, "You seem to be very rich, but you seem to be VERY happy." He said, "No, I pretend to be happy. I am miserable." I said, "What you can be miserable for? What is wrong with you? Your wife has not divorced you. That's one credit. Your children are not disobedient. You are little bit reasonably spiritual person. You go to the church. Children go to the church. That's a phenomenon I have never seen. That's why I came to your house. You are one family, you go to church and your children go to church, and they go because they WANT to go to church. And your parents go to church." He said, "That's right." "And you have money, you have so many carpets, so much investment, you are so rich. How can you be in difficulty?" He said, "Can we not go to my study room?" I said, "Here we go." I said, "All right." So we sat in that study room and I said, "Cut it short. Come out. I know it all ready, but if you just tell me straight it will ease my time, your time, our time, you know?" He said, "I'm scared." I said, "What for?" He said, "I'm scared to be rich." You know, I had never heard that phenomenon before. Somebody's scared to be rich. I said, "What is it?" He said, "I don't know. I'm scared to be successful." I said, "How you feel?" He said, "I think I have stolen from some people. There are so many poor people and I am rich. I think I am a thief." I said, "Do you see anything wrong?" "No." "Have you ever cheated?" "No." "Have you ever lied?" "No." "Have you done something under the table, over the table, side the table...?" He said, "No." I said, "What is it?" "I am just afraid. I am scared to be rich. I am scared to be happy." Listen to this! I said, "You are scared to be in one piece!" He said, "You are right. That's why I wanted to sit with you privately and I wanted to know what I can do." I won't tell you what I told him but in three minutes after that he believed he will never be unhappy ever again. That's the Indian formula. That doesn't work in America. But he volunteered himself. He said, "I'll do anything. I honestly trust you. You are a man of God. I really have reverence for you. I even went to your class once," he said. "Get me out of the fear." I said, "It is very simple thing. It'll take five minutes. So I told him to do something which he is more afraid of than anybody has ever seen. I said, "Which one is better?" He said, "I'm okay." "Keep up." We have a comparative study of life. More we go, more afraid we become. More afraid we become and actually to be very honest, what we have we are not grateful and what we don't have, we don't worry about. Why? Because we are basically lonely. We don't talk to our girlfriend. We have no relationship with it. And that's our soul. There's a word called soul, son, sun. These are three words. Soul. Sole, soul. You spell it any way. Son Sun. The totality. Sun, the light. I have seen groups which charge, which teach you enlightenment. They think that by burning a candle there is a light. Yeah. Room gets lit, but do we get lit. Candle in us, we have never lit it. We don't have a match stick to trigger it, even. When we have that phony living and shallow living that we don't have any relationship with our own soul, what other relationship means to us? We live because of the soul, we die because of the soul, and we have no relationship. We want to win, we want to be victorious, we want to be great, and we have no nerves, no grit, no courage. You think anybody wants to be foolish? Not at all. You think anybody wants to be wrong? No. Anybody wants to be rude? No. You think there is any woman in the world who wants to be a prostitute? No. I'll say daringly, "No!" It is not having the nerve that puts us there where we don't want to be. We don't have a power to challenge and challenge to death. So I thought, "It is Guru Gaddee's Day, Guru's Day, so let us have about four sets to clean you out." I don't want to teach these days, it is not my prerogative anymore. But I thought it is very ridiculous, I am still alive, and there are people who love me, who came with me all so far. They believe they have the right to be happy. But they have to have guts. I love imperial guts. I love two things. You might think I love God. Huh? No. I'm very selfish. I don't love, I don't love anything. I love identity of integrity and dignity. Two things: I.D. And if you don't love these two things, you don't know who you are and you don't love anything. Scale out your life on these two parallel lines and let your loose caboose run on it and find it out where is your integrity and where is your dignity? I mean, don't go to anybody. Analyze yourself. Do you have it? You can't be social because you are scared that you can be scandalized. You can't be rich because you can be afraid that somebody will steal from you. You cannot be honorable because you do not know what it is. You need a mind, vast, computer, intuitive mind. Intuitive mind can give you integrity. An undivided mind will give you divinity. Hey, this religion, religion. Everybody mocks at it, it is not good, da, da, da, da. But I don't know what they think religion is. Religion is just nothing but a pure realism of self acknowledgement and self experience which is God. Listen to me. Tell me I am totally wrong and I what I am telling you according to your standards is totally wrong: There is no God out there. Period. It is all within you. Neither there is, nor there will be, nor there can be. God is in you. God is in your integrity, in your identification of your divinity with dignity. What is divinity? When you have absolutely no duality. I said: "don't love anybody but God... don't be two faced." "Maybe, I don't know, naw," you know when you do those kind of things? It means you are not intelligent and you can't compute to even answer what is to be answered. And there are no teachers also. I understand teachers need money, they have to please the student, and, "How many students you've got, how many centers you have got? How rich you are? How poor you are?" It's totally ridiculous! I mean to say, you are not already rich. I have not seen richness in America. I was born rich. I was born not with a silver spoon, but with a big gold spoon in my mouth. I never knew what poverty is. I never understood. I mean even still the biggest thing for me is to say, "No." I don't know how to say it. It doesn't exist in me. Sometimes really people think I am just a confused man because I will not say, "no." Because I don't believe there is something as 'no.' If I cannot do it, I'll try to do it. If not, I'll twist the arm of God to make it happen. Why not? It may take a little time, big deal. I don't know how to say 'no.' I do not now how to put down another person. You can look terrible to my person if you come in my presence and say, "So and so is bad." That would make me so horrible inside. I'll say, "What is this? This is human?" You know, sometimes you say, "I don't like so and so. That person is stupid. That person is a slob. That person is no good. That person is black. That person is yellow. Yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh." It looks like cockroaches trying to run like a horse. That's how I feel. This is how I feel... a man of God... so just imagine how God feels! Put down, set down, say things, being jealous, being angry. Unbelievable! Go, yell, scream, just wake up somebody. Within the rules these are tools. Senses are tools. Senses are not ends. Create sensitivity, create sensation, use it as a tool, so that you can move... move forward. So I thought, "Let me track down my own footprints." Somebody did me good. Taught me to meditate. I don't think under my teacher anybody of you can stay one day and a quarter. There's no way. With all my richness, with all my authority, can you believe he tucked me, put me on the tree and said, "Stay there until I come back," and he showed up three days later? I was on a tree. Try it sometime. Somebody said, "Get on this tree." I thought he was telling me to go and get something up there. He said, "Well, stay there until I come back." And I thought he would come back in an hour or two or three, or something like that. Three days later he said, "How are you feeling?" And you know what I said? I said, "Great." I came down and he said, "It must be miserable." I said, "No. I have learned how to sit on the tree for three days. That's more divine than God can give me heavens." He said, "How you managed?" I said, "Well, the greatest difficulty was to clean myself. That was the worst. And I don't know what you might have thought, and I figured it out, that this tree has splits and in the east split it contains water at night. It brings automatic water. And I found out the water is drinkable, it is usable. And then I found out also that tree has small leaves. If you pull them off and chew them, you don't feel hungry." The worst thing was that I didn't have a bath and it was a hot summer and I stunk, you know? Then I thought there must be something. There was not too much water and there was nothing everything, but there must be something. So I went on the top and I found some leaves which were kind of a yellowish color and I made a big bundle of it and rubbed my body with it. It was very cool. And somehow the survival of the fittest, I found everything on that tree was okay... cozy. It was all hidden. Simply I had to track it down. Then comes night, how to sleep? Now a guy like me who's servant makes the bed and flower petals are sprinkled and only you're a small king served, that kind of stuff, now I am on the tree. If I fall, it is 18 feet down. I understand. And there were rocks. I mean, I had a good idea if I fell, what would happen to me. And you know, when you sleep, you sleep on the steering wheel. You don't care if accident happens. And I knew how to sleep. And I found out if I can curl on the side in a baby pose, I can tangle my legs into one twine and if worst comes to worst, I'll be hanging and I won't fall. And that worked. Yes, it was very painful. And what was it? Because just a teacher said, "Be on this tree and I'll come back and we'll go together." Three days later. That is how the Oriental teach. Very difficult. You can't have a teacher. For you teacher is a man. For us teacher was a way to God. That's the difference. That's the difference. For me my teacher was my way to God. I don't care whether he was educated or not, he was rich or not, he would teach me or not, or con me or not. I thought I had every intelligent right to decide who my teacher is. But once I have now made it, I am going to make it, doesn't matter what. To me it was a way to God. And look, I came to America and I still say, "Trunk Pie." I do not say, "Turn Pike." I still pronounce it wrong. And there you are sitting like, "What is he going to say?" I still say so many wrong words. Now I do it intentionally because that's the way my humor is. I still remember I used to make Shakti sit in the class and when I spoke English-English and it is not American-English, she would tell me, "People don't understand what you say." That's how I studied. I learned. But one thing is, I never had a fear that I will not have students. I never had a fear I won't be successful. I never had a fear, "Who will do my PR?" No, I didn't have anything. In Canada, when I came, everything fell apart. So I used to make a song, "One day the day shall come when all the glory shall be Thine. People will say it is yours, I shall deny, not mine." And we used to drive the car and make up verses and sing and be happy. Twenty years ago a man came who couldn't by any virtue of sight, action and otherwise, be even allowed to imagine he was a yogi. That was me. When I came to the immigration here, they said, "Certify you are a yogi. You know, we are giving you a green card." I said, "No, Canadian Government got me as a yogi. I am very well known yogi. Don't bother me." He said, "No. That's Canada. This is America." I said, "What do you want? He said, "I want a certificate that should prove that you are a yogi. Then we'll give you a green card." I said, "I don't think you want to give me a green card." He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, who can tell you that I am a yogi or not?" He said, "I don't care who can tell me. All I need is somebody to tell me which I cannot refuse." I said, "Oh? How many days you have?" He said, "Three more days. Otherwise your file will be rejected. That's why I called you in person." I said, "You don't have to worry." I went down to Bank of America, I paid one dollar, I told the girl to type it, "I, Harbhajan Singh so and so, hereby certify that I am a perfect, good yogi." Signed and sealed, sworn by this, stamped, whole thing. I brought three copies. I gave him one. I said, "Here you are." He said, "What? This is your declaration." I said, "Who else can tell me I am good?" He said, "I can refuse it." I said, "I will sue you tomorrow at 10:00, application filed in the court that you are harassing." He said, "This is your word of honor?" "You told me you cannot refuse this, a legal document. Prove it otherwise." He said, "Okay, okay, okay. I'll accept it." I said, "That's fine." Fear is good when we are afraid of bad. But just to live out of fear, deal out of fear, think in fear, imagine in fear, is a terrible slap on the face of God. You know what a fear means to me in my terms, in my dictionary? When I totally betray God Almighty. It is a treachery. It is my treachery against God. That's fear to me. Yes, I am afraid. I am afraid to say, 'no.' I am afraid not to help people. I am afraid to not uplift anybody. I have hundreds of fears. But that is a force which brings my love out. I am afraid to deny anybody which good I can do. But just make total life nothing but a bunch of fears and making yourself a fool of all the time, and to be... What fear does to you, it makes you narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow. It shrinks you. Fear is a shrinking process. Whereas on the other word, you want to expand, you want to be great, you can be wonderful, you want to be happy. It won't come from smallness. Small is not all. And all is not small. Do you understand English? Do you understand 'all?' It is an expression. How you spell 'small?' How you spell 'all?' Why the hell you are great Americans and you don't cut down that 'sm' and just believe in one word: 'all?' Tell me! Nobody can tell you! You don't have one person in your life who can just tell you, "Hey, get up, don't act small!" If your father tells you, you walk out of the house. If your mother tells you, you stop eating her food. If your wife tells you, you start flirting with other women. If your children tell you, you spit at them. Because you don't want to listen. I was just telling some kid, I said, "You are just very mischievous. You know what mischief is? When you miss to be a chief." He said, "No, I want to be chief." I said, "You are going to miss and there is nothing wrong in it. You can miss it if you want to miss it, you know? You want to miss the meal, you want to miss to be great, you want to miss to have a good car, you want to miss all that?" He said, "No." I said, "Then that all belongs to a chief." He said, "You ride a good car." I said, "I am Chief Religious Administrative Authority. I HAVE to... though I may not like it." He said, "I want to have that car." I said, "Don't miss to be a chief. And don't do mischief." I think that child will never forget it, to his last day. So we are going to meditate today. It is a hard day. I mean, all this good talk was just to lure you into it. It was a bait. I don't mean to not be honest. It is a very hard meditation. I want to do it because I have found out that you clog your mind with subconscious, incomplete dreams and fears, and if that overloaded subconscious lives in you, everything else falls under its own weight. You don't have to do anything good or bad, you'll be miserable anyway. And that's a simple thing. Sometime you take a break, you go for holiday, you try to relax and then you get diarrhea in that holiday and you get another miserable situation. So nothing works out. So problem is the subconscious. You are not innocent. You are not clear. You are not pure. And you can't be because you think YOU have to survive! You don't believe that God which can rotate the earth can take care of your routine. You know, that's not your religion, that's not your belief, that's not your philosophy. So let us see how you survive today. Are you ready? Well, I'm not going to impress to much because you have already paid, I think and if you don't do it, we are good. You are just extra. So it is a net loss of ten bucks, you know what I mean? But if you do it, it'll be quite good. And if you don't come to my other two meditations, don't. It doesn't mean anything at all. But I thought I would be very dishonest to myself that this is a Guru Gaddee Day and we celebrate Guru's day and people who I know are just losing grips. They are not together. I don't like weak people. To me... it doesn't go well with me. I believe the man is born to show the eye of the God... and eye of the God is his attitude and his aptitude, and his projection should be just imperial. Okay? It's a very simple exercise, but you know me... Well, what should I do? My teacher was such, I learned that way, I don't know anything more than this. I can't do those kind of 'sit down 23 years...' It's not the way. I don't believe that there's anything which we cannot experience and there's not any truth which we cannot express and mean anything. I believe, 'get it, get it.' Otherwise, don't get it. Okay? Okay. (The Siri Singh Sahib then leads the class in a long series of meditations and kriyas which are available on video tape from Golden Temple Enterprises in Los Angeles.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- - END OF TRANSCRIPT -