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Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogi Ji
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Look Through the Mind's Window

In this series of talks, I want to share with you a few concepts and some practical techniques that open the window of your mind. These are things that you as Americans don’t know at all and that people from India once knew and have forgotten about. These are fundamentals to live a happy and meaningful life. With your mind you can view every thought, every feeling, and every part of your life. But you can cover that window with so much dust from your ego that you cannot see your soul at all. You can forget your own concept, standards, and who you are in the reality of life.

Each of you knows that when the body is not cleaned, it eventually stinks. To prevent that you shower and clean yourself every morning. It is an act of self-respect and a duty to your consciousness. Do you know it is exactly the same with the mind? When the mind is not cleaned, it eventually stinks. So much dust can accumulate you cannot see anything at all and someone will smell the stink if they just think of you! The entire house of your personality gradually becomes a garbage dump if it is not cleaned.

You, the real you, can never ever be impure. You can never be broken, incomplete, or a sinner. All these feelings and phenomena are the result of your mental facets and projections. They gather together and form a mental breakout, an identical identity that is not real. The fact is, you are a part of the soul and the soul is a part of God, and you are alive because there is a soul in you and you have the energy of prana to live. That is it. But you don’t agree with that. Why? Because you get caught in your emotions, your traumas, your emptiness, your success, your ambitions, your imagination, and God knows what else.

What is it like to have the mind clear so you can see through it without distortion? It is very easy to feel and say, “I am very happy.” It is also very easy to feel and say, “I am very unhappy.” In reality you are neither happy nor unhappy. “Happiness” and “sadness” are your mental concepts. They are constructions of your mind and its projections. When the mind is clear it serves you. If you are unhappy, your mind should give you the way to be happy. If you are happy, the mind should just remind you that there is a possibility to become unhappy. It knows that every day is followed by a night and every night is followed by a day. This constant play of the polarities in life will never cease. Your mind should give you balance and applied intelligence to act. It is a mental problem when you try to fix on one extreme of emotion and hold the entire universe still. You can never always be happy and you can never always be unhappy. You must see and understand the fluctuating pros and cons, and then live through the diagonal on the line of the soul and reality between them. A clear mind helps you walk that diagonal path and be consciously you.

You should always remain you. You are supposed to remain you, come what may. That is the actual strength of your mind when it is clean and clear. But you do not handle the mind right. You distort the ego first thing. Instead of handling the ego, its attachments, and duties simply as they are, you over- stretch the ego. You inflate it and deflate it until the window of the mind is like those fun house mirrors. You overstretch your ego; you attack it as it is; and then you cannot handle the inflation and stretch. Every unhappy person has overstretched the ego. Normally, somebody comes and butters you up. They bathe you in compliments and kisses. They pump you up as if they had a foot pump [air pump], and you let it happen! You agree because it momentarily feels good. And if somebody comes and deflates you, drags you down, and drenches you in abuse, rumor, and doubt you still agree. You forget your own reality and dignity and become entranced by those projections out of fear, out of subconscious anxiety, out of many things. They tell you that you are miserable, and you are. All that overstretching and understretching is someone’s version of you. It is a mental concept and projection. Your subconscious and ego accept it. You become that other version of you. If God would have created you to be somebody else’s version of you, then you would merge into somebody for two hours and come out different. That is not what you are, nor how you are constructed to be. That is your mental distortion.

Look how this works. Did you know that whenever a president of the United States retires, he risks going berserk? He was in a job for a few years and starts to feel he is the lord of the entire universe. So when he retires, they make him feel that he is still a president. They always call him “Mr. President,” they keep him informed, and they even give him a temporary office and security guards. He is no longer president. He is not even a constable. He served and now he is out. But no one can respond to this fact. It can’t be done. A copy of every key report that goes to the real president goes to this guy. Every one knows and has a use for the fact that his ego became so big, that his chair is next to God’s. You are kept alive in your old position in your imagination for years and years. But he cannot go back. The four-year job is over. That is exactly the game of the ego: to keep you in place doing things you no longer do. Once you are stretched, you don’t want to go back to your accurate size.

This tendency to distort and inflate is a mental dependency that takes you beyond any reality, and that happens in every arena. It takes you beyond your fact, beyond your factual life, and beyond your consciousness to be you. You may think the spiritual world is somehow immune to this. That is not true. It is the worst of all. There are many ego trips in the spiritual world. And spiritual ego is one of the worst, most intractable of all egos. One trip is to always separate your cash from your pocket, as if the dollar was a currency in the heavens. Another is indirect buttering. Very few spiritual people speak to you straight and blunt. I am not very young now, and I have seen very, very few. Most speak like this, “Hummm. Yeah, I see you are a beautiful and wonderful person. I feel a great light around you. You must be a healer and had great past lives.” They inflate your spiritual ego and make it even harder to see through the window of your mind. It doesn’t help you with the job of cleaning. It is better to tell the student what they need to do. Just tell them, “You are an idiot. You are doing a terrible job. You act nonsensically. Don’t do this with your life. But if you choose, go ahead and walk your own way to hell. But if you want to change directions, this is the way to be clear and go towards the heavens. Thank you very much.” If they leave ten dollars, fine. If not, that is fine. You did your job and that is it. You engaged them, looked at them clearly without distortion, classified the problem, computerized the answer and direction, and shared it. The matter ends. Sat Naam, Wahe Guru. Gratitude to God and Guru, there is nothing more. Job is done.

I have heard people in every church project their own inflations and distortions on every teacher. Someone listed everything he believed Jesus did. I listened and finally had to say, “What did Jesus the Christ really do? You talk like an idiot. Why don’t you do what he did? He didn’t talk this way about himself. Jesus Christ did a lot of things and didn’t do a lot of other things. But one thing he did for sure. He won everybody through the heart, through compassion, and love.” Beyond that actuality he doesn’t exist. You can stretch it and make a big deal, a huge construction around it. He lived a simple line of life with an impact and legacy. I hear the same about Guru Nanak. Guru Nanak said this, said that, had this miracle and that. Guru Nanak said one basic thing: “Live in truth.” Beyond that Guru Nanak didn’t say a word. He lived it and his words lived it.

Somebody brought me over eighty volumes of Buddha’s work. It was a carload of books. I said, “Thank you for the gift. Am I supposed to read all that?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “I can already tell you what is written in them.”
He said, “Please, tell me.”
I said, “Buddha said one line. ‘Let your buddhi guide you to the sattva.’ Let your wisdom guide you to truth.”
He said, “That is true.”
Buddhi means wisdom. Sattva is the purity and truth. That is all Buddha said, not a word more. While he lived people tried to inflate his statements, but he was wise.
They asked him, “Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Did I say so?”
Then they asked, “Well, is there no God?”
He said, “I never denied it either. Leave me alone.” His conception was very simple and true.
Mohammed actually said only one thing, “Be humble, humble, humble before God.” And yet so many things are said about him in the service of every spiritual ego.

The spiritual world is not calm, quiet, and peaceful. It is not a special realm that is minus ego and minus the mind. Everybody who wears white robes and has a long beard like me is just saintly and godly. That is not true. They are still people, and they must still deal with the mind and the ego. You can have ego. That is not the problem. It comes with living. It comes with the vibrancy and polarities in life. The problem is when you go with the ego, inflate it, deflate it, and depend on it. I don’t want to offend your ears with something I should not say. You all know what happens to any meal, even to a gourmet meal. It goes through you and ends up coming out in the rest room. No matter how inflated the gourmet and grand the meal, it will come through the same as a humble meal. Then you press the button and it goes down the tubes with water and runs through all the pipes to be processed or to end in the ocean. If you have to go with it, through all the pipes and darkness and smell, it is a long and dangerous journey. You should just let it go! It doesn’t matter what the meal is and it doesn’t matter what the words are, spiritual or political or economic. It is not you. And you must find a simple diagonal line of life through it.
Your spirituality is basic and authentic. Its natural authenticity does many good things for you. What supports and carries you through challenge, temptation, and pain? It is not my money, not my friends, not my power, and not my status. It is the light of my soul that can carry me. It is my statement, my depth, and my impact from the heart. You think it is your environments and the things in those environments. You put a huge amount of energy and time to create those environments. But then you become a prisoner of them and they will never carry you anywhere. The security you thought they would provide turns out to be a blind spot. It is called mental duality. With no duality, with innocence and genuine spiritual integrity, you flow with the flow of your spirit. Then your mind will just serve you and life will be creative, elevated, beautiful, and authentic. And when it is authentic, you will be trusted. You will be direct, speak the truth, and never need to manufacture anything negative to manipulate or control anything.

Mostly you train your mind to listen to “inflations.” You love the pleasing sounds that praise your ego. That is why Guru Amar Das, the third teacher of the Sikh path, said, “Oh my ears you were meant to hear the Truth.” These ears listen so much to inflated lies they can not recognize the truth when it is spoken. If the window of the mind is dirty, if the mind is shallow and you have not refined it, then you can speak truth to such a mind and it can not hear it or take it in to experience.

Life has become a “I-love-you, I-don’t-love-you” game. You do not actually love, nor do you hate. There is no truth in either one. Love itself is blind. It is beyond pluses and minuses. When you are in love, how can you see if somebody is nice and beautiful or not? You can’t see a thing. When you are in love, you just love. You don’t think, “Oh, I love your tan body.” How can you love because of a tan body when you can’t see at all? Love is a faculty of the spirit, and it does not know a limit or a definition. A young girl told me her story. A man told her, “You are very beautiful. You are pretty. Your body is perfect. You are my darling.”
She loved all that, and so they made love together. Lovemaking was very good, they were fine, they had a good night. Two days later, he told her, “You are an idiot. You are too picky. You are this and you are that.” My God, in 48 hours everything changed. There was no reality in any of it. When she went to a psychoanalyst, the therapist told her, “During the first time he wanted you. By the second time he didn’t. Don’t be confused.” This type of game, and the pain it creates, has become usual.

We habitually spin lies in the name of truth. We have become accustomed to this as a fact and even admire it like marketing. This is how our mental games drop us. We fall from our own innocence and descend from our own elevation. We are very beautiful and creative people. We are made in the image of God. We have the fastest and the most wonderful power—our own mind. It can take us to God. It can take us to ourselves. It can take us deep into our self or far out into the universe. The mind is so sensitive it can go into any bird, take the feelings of the bird, and tell us all those feelings. When clean and open the mind can do anything that we want.

Sometimes you feel stuck. There is a kind of inertia. You can’t feel you. And you can’t get out of a feeling. A student asked me, “How can I get out of my feelings?”

I said, “First decide who is feeling in you. Is it Miss Depresso or is it Miss Kaur—the Princess of Consciousness in you? Who are you?”
She said, “I don’t know. I am totally caught in my feelings.”
I said, “How are you caught? Are you caught by someone else? Tell me the feelings. Show me. Give me the root.”
She shook her head saying, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

When you lose your elevation and have no habit to listen to your consciousness, then it seems like you have no choice. You do not understand it because your mind is doing this to you. Your mind is not supposed to do anything to you. Your mind is supposed to do things for you. Now you are caught in the game of mind and ego. Between the two you can be stretched until nothing is left.

If we can remember this one little thing and take it to heart, then we can solve our problems a hundred percent. Just remember: the mind is given to us, we are not given to the mind. It is a simple thing. What did I say? Can you repeat it out loud and listen to your own words? If you can listen and hear the power of your own spoken word, your own committed language, and if it is remembered by you, it becomes you. Say it and listen to it consciously. That is the work of the mind. It should listen consciously and help you be surprisingly successful.

The art and science of using sound to imprint and awaken the mind is called Naad Yoga. I have taught its inner science and secrets publicly for the first time for everyone. At one time it used to be taught to sages and rulers and healers. Now it has to be taught again because there is so much pain coming from these mind games. We must tame the mind and make it our servant and friend. There is no better way than through the power of the word, the naad of the shabd and the projection of the consciousness.

The window of your mind can be cleared or fogged over by the words you use and how you use them. There is a gap between what you say in words and what you intend to communicate. That is why you are so often confused. That is why we have to learn to honestly talk with each other. That is why we need to learn to notice when our mind has split off with the ego and emotions. The only thing that is communicated and is heard as it is at the same time is the truth. That is a power of your mind. It can penetrate the subtlety and intention behind someone’s words and it can project and fill yours with a truth beyond any fear or need.
In the spiritual world, the words of a teacher are very precise. The job of the spiritual teacher is to be a warning. A spiritual teacher is not your guide and your destiny-maker. The teacher knows what your destiny is. He knows who you are in consciousness, in spirit, and in circumstance. But the main job is to give you a flashing red light at the proper time to avoid an accident. That way a potential accident can be turned into a harmless incident, and you can go on your way, by your own grace and consciousness. That is authentically spiritual. It is just like when your car stalls on the freeway. You put a sign out or some flashing red lights. Why do you go to that trouble and expense? Because you don’t want someone to hit the back of your car. We all have the capacity to keep going mentally, physically, and spiritually. That is the Will of God, that is our construction and that is the flow. We only grow corrupt because our mind has started guiding us rather than serving us.

Your soul gives you awareness and the language of love. Your mind gives you consciousness to sense all the differences and the lines drawn. The teacher warns you and helps keep your mind clear, so that you can be guided by the light of awareness and use the power of your consciousness. Your habit in words and concept is to divide everything. What is yours and what is mine? You never remember what is God’s and what is divine.
I talked to some one this weekend. They said, “I am out of my mind today.” It was the first time I had ever heard this from someone.
I said, “What does that mean? How can you be out of your mind?”

She said, “Well, nothing sinks in. I hear the words and have a lot of feelings, but they just go by.”
I said, “I can hardly believe this. My god, you say nothing at all sinks in? My dear one, the capacity and the faculty of your mind is a supersensitivity so that everything sinks in right away.”

She looked worried and asked, “What is wrong with me? What can I do about it?”
I spoke to her directly, “You have a huge fat ego pad between your mind and you. That is why nothing sinks in. It is a big thick pad. When your ego is involved this way, put it in your left hand and close your hand into a fist. Now keep that ego there.” Whenever the ego serves you, your intelligence doesn’t. When intelligence doesn’t serve you, wisdom leaves as well. The ego lets you know only what is yours. It becomes deaf and insensitive to receive anything else.
The language beyond mind and ego is love. It is a sixth sense. It is called union or merger. Sometimes you accomplish it. The majority of people here get married and set up everything separately. They marry and prepare for divorce on the first day. They have separate accounts, separate beds, separate pillows, separate bathrooms, separate rules, and separate minds. In the end they are really separate worlds. That is how the ego divides everything in the name of security or in the name of possession or in the name of being individual. What individuality can there be if you do not know you? Individuality without you is just difference. Individuality with you is uniqueness. I visited someone, and I saw they had two night-lights in one house. One was green and one was red. I asked, “What is this? Why are there two night-lights?” He said, “My wife likes the red light at night and I like the green.” I said, “God bless you and this marriage.” That is all we see and all we accommodate. Differences in colors, differences in cars, differences in beds, differences in everything. Your mind takes each feeling of the ego and expands it, stretches it into a line that divides you. Then you say, “I love you.” But you do not know what that is. It is just some biscuit that you eat. It is a pleasing taste for today. You don’t know how to speak in naad from the heart, beyond all barriers and without a mental condition and negotiation. Speak just from grace, from trust, from love, from your reality. You make a mental statement based on reacting to and facing the immediate time. In that way you face the time, and you face the time, and you face the time, until finally the times face you. Since you started with zero and spoke with zero, now you have zero to carry you through the time.

I saw a couple who were real. Unfortunately the wife developed cancer and was dying. The husband was deeply in love with her. She was beautiful, and she was dying without a hope for recovery. When I talked to the husband, he smiled. He was very happy. Then his uncle came in the hospital room and said, “John.”
He said, “Yes, Uncle.”
Uncle said, “Ruth is dying, and you are sitting there with a smile. I heard you tell her that you are grateful, and I heard, ‘We were together and now this is the last time. But I will meet you there soon. It is not a problem. I am with you.’” The uncle asked, “Aren’t you sad?”
He said, “No.”
The uncle said, “You don’t even realize that your wife is dying.”
The husband said, “Uncle, my wife is not dying. She is very clever and intelligent. She is just going home early. I have to follow her. I am giving her a good send off. She is so beautiful. Can’t you see she is beautiful, she is intelligent, she is pure, and she is bright? I am a little down. I want to join her. But I have more chores to do, more karma to complete before my call comes. I am with her nonetheless, and she with me. I am not lonely.”
That was a condition of love, of merger, and no barrier. The mind only served the relationship, the reality, and the dignity.

You have the ability and intelligence and consciousness. You are just scared. That is why you need to practice meditation, naam simran and jappa to cleanse the fear out of the mind. You can tune up your mind with a sacred tune of God, with the words of truth from the Guru that penetrate your heart. The maximum percentage of your brain you can use consciously is about five percent out of a hundred. But if you use only point three percent of your brain capacity consciously, intelligently, and without ego, everything will go smoothly. You are the master of your destiny. You are the leader of your day. You are the light of your life. You are nothing but a representation of God on this planet. That is the Will and decree, and that is God. In God you dwell, and God dwells in you. It is mental forgetfulness and your fears that close the window of the mind, so you do not see the beauty and reality of your self. That is what causes all these unwanted and unnecessary ego troubles.



Beloved God, be kind to us, bless us to remember Thee now and forever.
Give us the consciousness to live, the truth to rely on, and Thy grace to walk with. May those who have come here in Thy name be blessed and
delightfully received in consciousness. Make their journey fruitful,
their listening graceful, and their life full of virtues so they can carry
Thy message into the world of today and tomorrow.
Sat Naam.

© YB Teachings, LLC
Above Article Copyright © Yogi Bhajan 2002. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.



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