-Khalsa Council Morning Gurdwara- WAHE GURU JI KA KHALSA, WAHE GURU JI KI FATEH! We are going to discuss today what is called the vanj, the employment. The employment in Sikh Dharma. And the caliber of employment, prosperity of employment, life as employee, relationship between employee and employer, and how the Siri Guru Granth and Sikh Dharma talk about it. Soul is my employer. My self is the employee. My mind is the sorting office and organization. And my faculties and my virtues are my basic assistants. My tattwas are my elements. My chakras are my resources and my faculty to project within the aspect of my own life (which is my destiny) that is my profit. And there is a long journey I have to travel with the caliber what people call "God" and I call "happiness". Happiness is the birthright of every human and happiness is ordained. It's not that we have to search for it. If I do not create any relationship with my employer, (my soul boss), and I do not vibrate through my resources (which are my chakras), and I do not have my basic products, (my tattwas), and I do not have what you call my public relations, and my public relations and my projection and my estimates, (my gunas), who on the earth can make me happy, including God? No way. And those who are not in a business mood to take life like a business, and they just want to be busy doing their emotional, commotional and neurotic things and then: 'Beejay bikh mangay amrit' You sow poison and you ask nectar. What justice is that? 'Vikh koeh nee-aaoh'. Look at this justice. Majority of the people do not understand the employment by the soul master and the Infinity within ourself. And our success attitude (which is our destiny) is not that totality... reality... blissful, bountiful and beautiful... but the totality of our life is that I am here and I should have a tomorrow where I become bigger. My area of influence should become bigger. Therefore if we have three bedroom house, we feel we should have six bedroom house. If we have an inferior car, we feel we should have superior car. But do you understand that that's a good faculty of life that you want to expand and you want to be better and you want to show it? But the question is: for what? If you consider time as your employer, then all what you are doing is okay. But time is not your employer. Space is not your employer. The soul master is your soul... the infinity, the light within you... and its productivity can only be seen through the balance of all other elements in the business in which human life walks through. Pressuring the life with a lot of decorations... earthly decorations... is overloading the circuits. How many rooms a person needs to sleep in and how many couches he needs to sit in? If you take an elementary look at the whole attitude, our attitude is totally off. We are catering to the wrong master and we think we have the right reasons. Once I remember in Canada I was just very healthy and extremely by myself with no resources whatsoever, and one day somebody just found out that he could invite me to his house to bless his house and he wanted to have langar. So I thought it would be much better to go to his house and meet the community. I'll have a chance to bow to the Guru, I'll listen to the kirtan. My attitude was very simple and realistic. But when I went to the gentleman's house I found out that he was so involved in that house that it was much MORE pressure... I sat down with him and I asked him, "Have you found heavens? You are talking about this house as if you have found heavens. You have 30 foot long powder room and you have 60 foot by 20 foot long walk-in closet and you have this and you have that." And I said, "This all the geography you are giving me and you have remembered it. have you understood where is your heart center, and where is your situation, and what guna you talk through, and with what elementary situation you confront your life, and how you gear yourself into the reality of it?" I mean to say, he was a doctor, PhD, and he was a business man and he was a rich man. He looked at me as if I have come from Mars and I am talking something totally beyond his conception. And today I was figuring out that, do we really know who is our employer, who is our master, who is our guide, who is our guardian, and what for we are living? And do we have proper things in proper shape and proper form in our understanding? It doesn't matter whether we qualify for it or not. I'm not talking of that. I'm qualifying for myself in the sense that Siri Guru Granth is my Guru and as far as I know, Siri Guru Granth reminds only one thing: it tells me who is my owner, who is my employer, who I am serving, who is all that. And without all that constant knowledge, reminder and reminding of it, I then may forget it (without Siri Guru Granth) where God is. God made the planet earth and God sent us on the planet earth and God gave us all the complete faculties to pay our homage. It is just like a situation which comes to my mind. Guru Arjan Dev, when Guru Ram Das said to Guru Arjan Dev (he was Arjan Mal then, he was not the Guru yet), and he saw the older brother was very obnoxious. Some people are very obnoxious. They think that they draw attention by being obnoxious. He was so obnoxious to Guru Ram Das that Guru Ram Das wrote a shabad for him. "My son, why you are fighting with father? I gave you life and birth not for the insult. It is not good. It is a sin to insult me for no reason." So he must have been very PhD in insulting Guru Ram Das that that shabad even exists. Some people think that by their obnoxious behavior and by their insulting behavior and by their yelling and screaming, they can draw attention. But that's just for one minute. You can win for a shorter while, but in long run you lose because of your reputation. And that is what is very important in life: to be a Sikh and to have a flow of the chakras and gunas, totally understood. And that is when Guru Ram Das Patishaa was the Guru. He saw Prithiaa... Prithi Chand... doing all those weird things, so he sent away Arjan Mal to Lahore with the instruction: "Don't come back till I call you." These were the instructions. And with those instructions Arjan Mal had no other avenue but to obey. But he realized that at least it is a long time, the pain of separation of being away from the Guru's house was so much. He started writing. That's where 'Mera Man Lochai Gur Darshan Thai-ee, Bilap kare chatrikaa kee niaaee'. Those four letters in the form of Gurbani Kirtan. And the test was... you all know the story, that letters were hidden and when the letters were found out and Prithi Chand claimed to be the Guru and he thought it was his birthright. Because many of us think that we can be everything, without knowing what our capital is, what our calibre is, what our projection is, what our resourcefulness is, and how much power of change and flexibility of transmission in our life we have. We think we can copy everybody and, "That's... oh, that's a piece of cake." Life is like that. But Arjan Mal was there and the three letters were found and Prithi Chand was there. Guru Ram Das said: "Prithi Chand, you are my older son and you totally believe, TOTALLY BELIEVE, that you should be the next Guru. And you do not believe that the crown of spirituality is bestowed, it cannot be conquered. And I do not want to deny you the right of that happiness." (My subject is: 'The Happiness is my Birthright.') "Therefore, these are the three letters which you say you didn't write, though they have been found from your coat. And you said, 'What is in these letters?' You shall be the next Guru if you write the fourth letter like it. That's it. Just on one situation, if you are so elevated that you can write the fourth matching letter to these three letters, you should be a Guru." Prithi Chand at that time never knew that as a Guru he has to sit on a hot plate. That was not known to him. He was thinking of all the glamour which a Guru goes through. He didn't know the test of the Guruship. So he couldn't. He said, "All right, Arjan Mal, you said you wrote those three letters. Now you write the fourth." And the fourth letter, Guru Arjan Dev later and Arjan Mal at that time wrote, "Bhaag hoaa gur sant milaaeeaa, prabh abinaasee ghar meh paaiaa. Sev karee pal chasaa naa vichaaraa. Jan naanak daas tumaare jeeo. Ho gholee jio ghol gumaaee, Jan naanak daas tumaare jeeo." So when that letter was written, Guru Ram Das gave the Guruship to Guru Arjan Dev. And that is how this story tells us that you have to have that elementary calibre to switch your side from whatever the circumstances are to the elevated self of that of God, and that guarantees happiness. Because the shabad which was being sung here, and before that and this, whereas Guru guarantees you that Guru is the guardian of your happiness. And a lot of people who believe and love Guru are miserable. And that is a dilemma which needs to be solved. People want three things in life: One, they want is to be successful. Second, they want to be happy. And third, they want to be resourceful. That's very important. Nobody talks about resourcefulness. Everybody wants to be rich. Now rich without reach is nothing but a living misery. There's no such thing as richness. It is the reach which makes a person rich. And in a simple valid life, we call it 'resourcefulness' -- how resourceful you are. And proportionately, person who is resourceful within himself is very resourceful outside also. And that's very important. In my own life I met a gentleman who was worshipped by millions of people. Millions. You can well understand that about a million persons would think of him in the morning and then just drink a glass of water. That was his worship, his prevalent power, his reach. He could have saved somebody, just send indirectly a message. It was not only done, it was triple done. It was considered in life an honor. When we were sitting and talking, he told me he was very unhappy. It was a very great matter of interest. And he asked me, he said, "You are the Yogi Baba, and I have heard much about you. I cannot talk to everybody. I am talking to you. Tell me, with all that what I have," he said, "with all that what I have, all the glory which I have, all the contentment I have, and I am doing well," he said, "but I am very unhappy inside." I said, "There are two types of unhappiness. One, you pretend to be unhappy. Are you pretending to be unhappy? Or are you really unhappy?" Because we pretend unhappiness most of the time for dealing with the life. It's a tool we use and it's very important to us. So he said, "No, I must say, I know you know everything. Can't you just see that?" I said, "Yes, I don't want to admit that you are not unhappy. You are very deeply unhappy. I can understand that. But I'm not, I don't have the authority to talk to you like that because I have great reverence for you." He said, "No, I have opened the question." And I told him. I said, "You have reached outside but it doesn't go deeper than your skin. Whatever you do for yourself is a ritual for you. You don't enjoy it. You're not a student of yourself. You are a teacher and a master of everybody, but you're not a teacher of yourself. And you can't be happy." And all of a sudden he looked at me and he said, "Can I be your student?" I said, "Forget it. That's not what I have come here for, and I cannot take your drag. You are a heavy load. To have you as a student is not possible. It is impossible." He said, "Why?" I said, "I am a Sikh of the Guru. I am a student of my Guru. And to take you, it's a different path." I said, "Your path is very set up path. It is the path of fixation. It is a path of the cross. It is a path of the temple. My path is a path of the word. Word... Shabad. I have reached a point of sophistication of the subtleness of the Shabad Guru. I can't even look at it. To me it looks like B.C." I said, "The soul of Nanak transformed himself to ten paths... ten bodies... to prove the point the physical presence may be so great, but ultimate left of the ten Gurus is only the word, which is in the relationship of the God, and that's Siri Guru Granth to which I bow. Now tell me. You want to put me as your next man, and you want me to have all this as it is. But what about me? There's no way." And we further conversed and I found it out that mostly on the religious path, we have everything out of our skin and we build a huge facade without knowing what purity means. Purity means that outside facade and inside facade has to be exactly clear and simultaneous. That's what purity means. And piety means that you can do it without waste of time. The excellence which Sikh Dharma stands for is not the excellence we talk about. The excellence is that we see the unseen and we see the seen at the same time. The sense of realization for each student of the Guru should be such that we should be so subtle and so perfect that we see the unseen and see the seen at the same time when we are dealing. Somebody said: "What is unseen?" I was in Los Angeles. I gave the example. I said: "You through California and you want to go to San Francisco. You are driving on the road. You are seeing the sign, you are seeing the road, you are seeing the lane, you are seeing all the cars coming and going, but the San Francisco area is in your mind. You are already seeing your house in San Francisco. You are already seeing your children, you are already seeing the feeling of waiting, you are already thinking of a warm, good smelling food. You are already there. It's a journey." And I think religion has failed. I honestly feel religion has failed. It is corrupt. It did not give a man that homey feeling about God. Rather it corrupted the man for it's own sake by saying, "Hey, wait a minute! You are born in a sin and you are ugly and you are dirty and you are corrupt and you are negative and you are nothing, and you will have to find God." Well, guy is driving, you know? He's reached San Francisco, but the religion took away the majority way, it took away from the homeyness of God. And this shabad: "Jis man nete jag ta re mere man anand, man nahee teh paaeh pul param anand." It does not fit in majority of religions. It does not fit with the concept of religion. It tells you that you are born in sin and you are guilty of life. And I have experimented with this. There are some people, you give them some gift, you have to watch their one week of misery for nothing. They think they are not deserving. They think they don't want to have it. It is very funny. Everybody wants, but they also feel miserable when they get something and they display it all the time. My concept of that is that we are caught in such a self destructive duality that it is amazing how can we just even attach ourselves to it as humans. So let us talk in the Guru's language. Those of you who are young and teenagers or those who are in the middle ages and those who are trying to go through the concept of life to remember that what are you living for, what are you working for? Hey, if you are loving, living and working for the planet earth, then your soul will be with this earth. You are not going to go anywhere. Then you are really born in sin and you feel guilty. That's fine. But if you are in the image of God and you are coming from His Grace, and He is your employer and He is your ultimate end, then He IS the home, and there should be a homeyness in your expression. I was calling somebody on the phone this morning and I said, "Well, may I give you Happy New Year's Eve greetings now in the morning?" And the person responded with an utmost discourtesy. "Why? Why?" I said, "Well, my God, just advanced greetings are difficult? I mean, that's how painful you can be?" "Well, why don't you give me the greetings at the evening?" I said, "May I know where you shall be?" "I don't know." I said, "That's a perfect American attitude. 'I do not know where I can get the greeting, when I can get the greeting, but give me the greeting then, and you can't give greetings in advance.' " And I also feel very joyful to talk to people at about between one and three am, when they answer the call: "Hello, uh, Sat Nam, ji, who is this..." (said in a very slurred and sleepy tone of voice.) I mean, they are talking halfway. And there's no defense there. The faculty of cleverness is missing. And then I end up talking to a very real person, very real, very simple and real. And then I wake him up with my thunderbolt and say, "Wait a minute, do you know who you are talking to? You know?" "Oh yes, sir, I know, no, no, no." And "No, I know, no, no's" are so many times and I say, "Wait a minute. The miserable man cannot shift his gears. He has no transmission. He doesn't know what I'm talking." And it takes about five to seven minutes to get through to the frequency. "Yes, Sir, now...." I say, "Put on the light, drink a glass of water. Make a turn. Listen to me. I have to talk to you right now." "Okay, okay. Now I am awake." And it is ten minutes later the guy is awake. But faculty of human is he is awake. He's awake in the depth of sleep. He's awake in the sleeplessness. He's awake even in beyond the very existence of himself. There's no awakening to be sought. We are born awakened. The one part of us, the soul, is very awakened. It is part of the universe. There's no shifting. It is automatic. And I was wondering, from shifting gears, we built the automatic car, but we didn't put the automatic gear shift in us. And some of you who do not understand Sikh Dharma or do not understand the tool... there's a one tool in Sikh Dharma which is called bragan. Bragan. It is a piece of wood, 2 foot by 2 foot and a half long, and it is a standing thing on which you put your hands like this and you take your mala and you meditate. Now you'll ask, "What is a bragan." When you meditate and do mala very long and you do like this, it is a possibility that your body will give in. So to elevate your hand, you use a tool. Now, that's a part of our yoga. People always say, "What is the relationship between Sikh Dharma and yoga?" Sikh has to learn to take from yoga all the tools. That's the relationship. It's a very solid relationship. Mala. We all have mala. Every saint has a mala, every person has a mala. Mala is considered the tool to remind you how to meditate, how to chant, how to repeat, Jap. They call it also, "Jappa Mala." And sometimes status reaches of a person when he doesn't need jap mala. He's continuous. But in the beginning as "A" is apple, "B" is book, "C" is cat, "D" is dog, you've got to learn that way and that's what you do. Now if somebody Sikh said, "What is the need of jappa mala?" Now why we are wasting time with these kind of people? What is the situation? So, what I basically feel is that I know I have nothing against His Holiness, Padre the Grando, absolutely nothing, but just for saying "the car factory is wrong, but I want my fiat" it looks funny to me. It totally looks funny to me. A science which exists, out of which exists all facets of completing your religious desires, and completing and experiencing your religious reality, this is yoga. And practically it means union. And it is a science between man and God to have union. Where is it then that the religion came? What was the necessity of the religion? What was the necessity of the dharam? That is based on one word only. That is: "mantra." That's all. And if you understand all religions... let me share with you something funny and you may forget it, but let us talk facts. Now take Judaism. Yaa-hoo-vaah. The sound is "Yaa." Take Christianity. Haa-lee-lu-jiah. Sound is "Haa". Take Islam. Laa-ee-laa. Sound is "Laa". And take Hindu religion. Sound is "Raa-e- maah." Raa-maa. Sound is "Raa". Take Sikh Dharma. Saa-Taa-Naa-Maa, "Saa". So it is only a one word. It is that ONE word on which the entire structure of every religion is based! That's why there's no achievement. That there is a brand put on everything, but not the science with it. So it is a matter of going through the faith and relating to the faith and understanding that one day we shall be delivered. Well, may I know how many letters have been delivered without stamps? I will leave this question to you. And I would like to ask you to somehow go inward and search it out, who's your real employer? And you are living by virtue of what? What are the means you are living by? Are you living.... will you be alive if you have thirty-five room bed house and cars and servants and the food and if you have no soul? Or there'll be nothing, zero, and you'll be alive when you have the soul. With this question, I ask you to conclude the year, 1989, and I ask you to start the year 1990 with one concept: Soul is your Employer. Soul master is your employer. Chakras are your powers. Tattwas are your projections. And gunas are your values. So in this if you can understand, I shall pray that Guru Ram Das shall give you strength to keep it together because now onward from '89, our years of prosperity shall be there. There shall be no tragedy. And in tragedy, to keep ourselves together it is much easier, friends, than it is in prosperity. So you are going to find a lot of jumbled situations which you do not expect it today, because when there is a prosperity, there's always conflicts. When there's a tragedy, there's always automatic unity. So I know the tide is in your way and the years are going to be prosperous whether you like it or not, but however, it is my prayer that you should keep united with your soul and your sole purpose should be to serve the real master in you, the guardian in you, and that is your soul-self. Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa, Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ END OF TRANSCRIPT 12/31/89 YOGI BHAJAN Transcript by Tej Kaur Khalsa, Los Angeles, CA