Yogi Bhajan Lecture: Be Contained Within Your ‘You’
Excerpts from a lecture given by Yogi Bhajan on March 1, 1989, in Los Angeles, CA
Take any religion, take any teachings, deal with anything—there is only one thing: you should become you, complete and competent. That’s the process.
Life will have no other process but that. Your problem is that to keep alive inside, you use emotions, feelings, sex, and all that you can feel. Those who know the inside, know the entire outside. Those who know outside do not know the inside. That’s why there is an emptiness. Life is empty, hollow, and shallow because you are not inside you.
You have no problem with God; you have no problem with happiness; you have no problem with wealth; you have only one problem: you are not inside you. Mail man comes, gift man comes, delivery man comes. He calls; he rings the bell. Orders are to deliver to the person, and the person is not in. You are searching; those who are searching are never home.
If you sit in your home, the master is in the house and the lights are on. It’s very daring for a man to enter and plunder the house. Your problem is the same. You want to find happiness outside. Happiness is inside. If you never go inside, you never find happiness.
One thing you must learn: your body seems to be yours, but you are not the body. You are in your body. And within you is your real you. There is a trinity of you: body, you, and your spirit inside that gives security, fulfillment, and contentment. Contentment comes to you when you are contained within your you.
You marry, you love, you live. Your marriage has married problem. And when you are single you have a single woman problem or a single man problem. Problems do not go away. Holy man has his holy man problem, unholy man has his unholy problems. Beautiful woman has beautiful woman problem. Actors have actors problem and extras have extras problem. You won’t find one person without a problem. Every living life shall confront a challenge and every challenge which you confront is called problem. So no one can be without problem.
In the brain there is a thinking dialogue and that thinking dialogue causes insecurity. Insecurity is the mother of all your problems. You have to be ‘in’ to be secure. That is why when a person starts becoming secure, his problems start. You have to get into the secure to start problems. If you don’t care, there’s no problem.
The moment you start feeling that you are not secure, you are not. You are miles away from God. When you are in God, you are not insecure. When you are insecure you are not in God. When you are insecure, you are in your ego. When you are God, you are totally Infinite.
A desperate moment came in my life. I was commanding a unit where I was opposite a volley of bullets coming like rain. My second in command said, “We are running out of ammunition.”
I said, “Yeah, we are officers. We need to catch it.”
He said, “No way. I think we should retreat.”
I said, “We don’t know how to retreat. We have to win. It’s a psychological war. Bullets do not matter.”
He said, “Sir, we are running out of ammunition. What are you doing? I don’t know how much ammunition they have and they are not stopping. We are only matching up and we are getting short of it.”
I said, “Wire headquarters and see what can be done.”
He said, “Wireless is broken.”
I said, “Any other chance?”
He said, “No chance, the only chance is we retreat.”
I looked at my watch, I looked at the time, I looked at myself. And I just took my revolver, and I didn’t fire and just jumped outside the wall to the other side, and in seconds there was no war, there was no fire. My second in charge said, “Was that right, what you did?”
I said, “No.”
“You could have been hurt fatally?”
I said, “No.”
“Why?”
I said, “From the way they were firing and the sound which that rapidness created, I intuitively knew that they want to keep us away, but they don’t want to kill us. They want us to go away, and we were falling in their trap. I couldn’t tell you to follow. I jumped.
Man has problems because without intuition, you do not know what the psyche is doing, and you cannot have your intuition if you are bombarded with your inner insecurity. Your inner insecurity is responsible for your pain and displeasure and unhappiness and poverty.
Give yourself a chance. Remember that happiness in experience is the most costly item; do not even try to buy it cheap, it’s not there. Don’t believe in promises, believe in experience. See within you and find yourself. That’s the brightness of life.
There is no such thing as God—it starts with you, and it ends with you. All promises given to you, all knowledge given to you, all wealth, health, happiness given to you cannot make you walk with compassion and kindness on this planet Earth. Kindness and compassion are not small things—they are all of everything: to be kind to those who do not deserve it; to be compassionate to those who cannot even think of it; forgiving those who have absolutely no capacity to be forgiven; and honoring those who have lived all the time with insult.
Standing up with a smile to those who are tyrants and speaking with affection and love to those who have abused others all their life is the start of being human. Those who cannot speak kindly and cannot act compassionately have not yet learned to be human, no matter which country you belong to, how wise you are, how rich you are.
Start walking kindly and living compassionately—you will be surprised that Almighty Creator God will start walking with you hand in hand and be a friend forever. There is no bigger prayer, there is no bigger act, there is no better thought than to be kind to those who do not deserve, be compassionate to those who cannot think you can be. That’s the first step towards God’s friendship.
Don’t try to conquer Infinity. It’s not possible. Don’t try to ignore it, it’s not possible. Befriend it, you shall be happy, fulfilled, tranquil, peaceful, blissful, bountiful and beautiful. These are the simple experiences which you can enjoy. Thank you for the night, see you very soon, God bless, Sat Nam.
Blessed God, bring bounty, beauty and bliss to the heart of all. Bring peace and silence to the drums of war. Let the mankind learn to hear the beat of his heart over the beat of death. May Thy kindness make man to be the bountiful flower of peace, tranquility, joy, fulfillment and happiness. May the war Lords become people’s servants to enjoy serving the creation. In the smallness is the allness of Thy itself; may we all live to experience this. We pray that Thy power may guide us, may make us ourself, and give us the destiny and the glory and the height and the light. Sat Nam.