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Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogi Ji
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The Meditative Mind

What you call a meditative mind is not meditation. People must have a technology of mind to cope with their basic human problems. Meditation should be taught in a way that people can come and share what they want to share without any commitment. We want to take away the commercial treatment of this literal science. The question is very simple. You can learn meditation and work all your life on a meditation; but you may not get anywhere. Meditation is just a bath. You take a bath, and then you get ready and go out, and then you work. What does the bath have to do with the work? It does have a connection. It keeps you fresh and clean, it gives you energy. If you don’t take a bath, you can still go, you can still work. If you don’t bathe for awhile, you will start stinking, but you can still work. Meditation as a process guarantees one thing; that you have your mental faculties together. If you have your mental faculties together, there is no opportunity which you cannot capture.

Don’t misunderstand that if you meditate, miracles will happen. That is not true. But one thing is most true - if you have a meditative mind, there is nothing in your life which can slip which you don’t want to have slip. A meditative mind gives a clear consciousness and makes a person intuitive. It gives a human a very clear-cut idea of what is right for him and what is wrong for him, right there on the spot. Normally our problem is secondary thinking; we commit to things emotionally. Then we need total devotion to reach the destination of that commitment. Do you understand that problem? I decide to do a thing, right? And I tell somebody I am going to do this thing. He says fine. I say fine. Now it is an emotional tie. But until that thing is done, it requires constant emotion behind it. One has to be very devout to do it, until it is complete. I said fine, and he said fine, but after four years pass I have changed my mind, and now I don’t want to do it. I think, ‘God, what did I get into?’

Mostly in our lives we decide things in this fashion. We feel good about it, we like it and we want to do it. We want to commit to it, and then we don’t come through. We need not be blamed, because our intuition has not guided us to the net result of its ultimate success. At that moment it looked nice. It looked nice to you, it looked nice to me. We talked about it. We agreed. It sounded fine. But…Now this ‘but’ is the problem. ‘But’ takes on a life, and if life becomes ‘but’, there is no happiness in life. It doesn’t matter how young or old you are, it has no value in human life.

If you are in power today, and you start saying a thing and not doing it, people will not depend on you. Your reputation precedes you. Your reputation takes you further than you. Your reputation is faster than the time and space you are in. You have to build credit to build your reputation. They call it ‘personal credit.’ What is human credit? Human credit is that you are what you say. You deliver what is expected of you, your word is divine law. You may be a Jew, you may be a Christian, you may be a Sikh, you may be a Moslem, you may be a Buddhist; if you don’t mean what you say, and you are the meanest of all. Do you buy that? Just ask your friends whom you have burned. You tell them something, and then you don’t come through. Ask what they think of you. Then ask those who you have come through for, and you will find that they think you are divine. They think, ‘Oh man, what he says he does.’ Your real power, your real happiness and reality, your religion, your concepts – they do not lie in what you have; they lie in what you can give. They don’t lie in how much you know; they lie in how much you can accomplish.

If you put all the Holy Scriptures on the back of a donkey, it won’t become a pandit. It won’t become wise. There’s no such law. Life is meant to be a practical mental experience. Each one of us should have a meditative mind. You can’t live without a buddy, a personal friend, a spiritual teacher, somebody you can trust. Do you know why two people booze together and enjoy it? Because they trust each other. What is trust? Trust comes from that truth which you deliver. Trust is Truth, and Truth is Trust; everything else is false. I can give you a beautiful imagination by telling you that if you follow me I can deliver you directly, physically, to God. You will believe me. You will wait until January, February, March, April, and if by June none of you get delivered, you will take clubs in your hands and say “Come on baby, what are you talking about? What about delivering me in physical body to God?”

A gimmick can work for awhile, but it won’t work in the end. You know when I came to this country seven years ago, I was asked to work with many rich people. I said no, I want to be rich myself, so why should I work for a rich man? That’s not what I’m meant to do. My concept of richness is that I shall deliver these ancient teachings as a science. I will open up the mystery of the mysterious world. What compensation will I receive? In dollars it may be little, but in terms of joy, it is limitless. When people tell me they are happy in life, they are healthy in life, they have got their scene together, they have progressed, they have dropped their weakness, and now they are great, that is a priceless reward. There is nothing equal to it. The greatest joy is when people trust you. It is priceless. There is nothing more beautiful than being trusted. The greatest dividend which can carry you through any calamity, is that you are capable of keeping the trust and capable of delivering the trust.

What is Divine? Who is God? Have you seen your dollar bill? It says “In God we trust.” That’s all God is all about, it’s no miracle. God is a trust in Infinity. To a Christian, Jesus in Infinity is a trust. To a Buddhist, Buddha in Infinity is a trust. That’s what it is all about. So and so is my wife. Why? You trust her as a wife. If she breaks that trust, even though there may be a legal bond, it will not have any value. What is friendship? Trust. What is business? Trust. You write an agreement, and if you break the trust, where will you be? In the court, proving what is what. As long as there is trust, you won’t even look at that document.

People ask, ‘What is the source of happiness?’ The source of happiness is human trust. What can build that trust? It can be built by an intuitive mind. The intuitive mind tells you whether you are rightfully or wrongfully trusting, so that you may start trusting yourself. If you don’t trust yourself, you can’t trust anybody. Sometimes you want to trust somebody, but that is wrong. First you must trust yourself, and then you can trust the whole world. If you don’t trust yourself, you can’t trust anybody. People say to me “At that time I couldn’t think straight. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind.” What is the right frame of mind? The meditative mind. The mind which knows the unknown part of the self. That is a priceless source of joy. How can it be achieved? When ether and earth balance into the central self and create equilibrium. When equilibrium is lost, my dear friends, life is lost.

For two hundred years we have developed technology, and we have hassled. We have wall-to-wall carpets and big cars, but we have never had a technology of mind. We started falling apart.

In the name of loving each other, liking each other, trusting each other, and being with each other, we hurt each other. We come here on earth for a temporary visit, on average, for 65 years. Our alien permit to this planet Earth is about 65 years on the average. We have to come to go, but you don’t go anywhere unless you become totally innocent. You cannot leave a place if you are totally involved. You may go to New Mexico for a holiday, but you don’t get involved in the politics of Santa Fe. What do you do? You go skiing, sightseeing, you eat out, you go here and there until the week is over, and then you leave. But you don’t get involved. You are the product of ether and earth. If you totally become ether, you will be totally spaced out.

A human has to find balance, equilibrium, and that comes from the basic practice of developing our mind meditative mind. It doesn’t matter what you believe in or who you are. If creatively you can build in yourself a meditative mind, you have made your life worth living.

Then comes the second question. How does one meditate? When you meditate, your metabolism changes. If you are in a sitting position on the floor, the circulation to your lower body is cut, and the meditative mind activity accelerates the brain, and provides greater circulation to the brain. That is why we meditate in a sitting position. If you ever meditate sitting on a chair, see that both of your feet have equal weight on the floor, and your spine is straight.

When you meditate, all dirty, negative, unwanted thoughts will pour out. And you say ‘Nay, nay, nay.’ This is what meditation is about. It is a hallucination when people say they have meditated when actually they have spaced out, or had an experience where they saw angels. That is not a real meditation. I call it a ‘trip.’ Meditation is when you sit down and unimaginable negativity pours out of your unconscious mind. Your mind tells you, ‘Hey, get up. Call so-and-so, let’s have a party,’ as you are mediating on the mantra, ‘Sat Nam, Sat Nam, Sat Nam.’ Every known and unknown negative hidden thought you have must come out. Chose a mantra, any one you want, which you think is positive, or you believe is good. Use it as a ‘cutter.’ Question yourself, your activity, your position in life, everything. Go on cutting the thoughts with the mantra and they will become positive. A mantra has the power to cut the intellect’s thoughts. The intellect will give you constant thoughts, it’s unavoidable. You think, you dream, you sleep, and even while sleeping you think. You think all the time. You can’t stop thinking, but you can cut the thoughts. When a negative is cut with a vertical line, it becomes positive; it becomes a ‘plus.’ Finally your mind becomes habitual to becoming positive, and that makes you saintly. If you are going downhill, and you apply the brakes, and stop, you are safe. If your brakes are not there, where will you end up? It is exactly this way in life. We have the ability to develop our mind so we can make it stop when we have to stop. If a person starts a sequence, and he cannot stop it, he shall end up with the consequences. Sometimes we start, and we don’t want the consequences, so we have to stop somewhere. For that purpose, we require a meditative mind.

Now there is another problem going on. Sometimes you are told that a mantra should be personal and private because whenever you meditate your experience is very personal and very private. It is so personal and so private, that even if you meditate in my presence, and I ask you how you feel, you can’t even explain how good you feel. You can say ‘very good, super,’ but this is just an expression. Therefore, each meditation is an absolutely private and personal experience, and each day of practice leads to perfection.

Some people teaching meditation these days tell you not to meditate before going to bed. I say meditation should always be done before going to bed. They say it because it suits Americans, because if you meditate before going to bed, you will wake up after two hours. Nobody knows how to handle this, but it is very simple. When you get up after two hours, get up and meditate again, and then go back to bed again. You may get up four times during the night, but ultimately you will only require two hours sleep. Normally in America you dream, you curl around, you sit up, you read papers, you do many weird things, just to try to fall sleep. Finally, you end up taking pills. This is all unnecessary. Your sleep will be instantaneous. You will lie down, and when you wake up your sleep will be over. There is a huge world, with lots of things to see, lots of things to read, lots of things to know – too much to waste nine hours sleeping.

A meditative mind involves the process of physical, mental, and spiritual self control. It is a simple science, which was known to people in ancient times. There are many, many civilizations which have existed on earth. People developed this as a science. They worked it out for the vastness of this earth, and today we can pick up this science and use it to achieve a meditative mind.

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



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