Mind and Meditation Manual and Study Guide

MIND & MEDITation STUDENT MANUAL The Aquarian Teacher™ KRI International Teacher Training in kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan®

Transformation Level 2 Practitioner certification course

Kundalini Research Institute

The Aquarian Teacher ™ KRI International Teacher Training in Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® TRANSFORMATION

Level 2 Practitioner Certification Course Mind & Meditation Student Manual Produced and Published by Kundalini Research Institute

ISBN 0-9786989-5-9 Student Manual and Study Guide Copyright © 2006 Kundalini Research Institute. First Edition, October 2006

Copyright © 2006 Kundalini Research Institute. All teachings, yoga sets (kriyas), techniques, and meditations courtesy of YB Teachings, LLC. Reprinted with permission. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of these YB Teachings may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing by the Kundalini Research Institute. To request permission please write to: KRI 3 Ram Das Guru Place Española, N.M. 87532 USA or email [email protected].

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• KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING MANUAL LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION PILOT MANUAL DRAFT

© 2006 Kundalini Research Institute

Many people served to create the Mind & Meditation Course and manual, one of five modules in the Level 2 Transformation Series of The Aquarian Teacher™, Kundalini Research Institute’s International Teacher Training Program in Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan®. The teachings represented here are based entirely on the teachings of Yogi Bhajan, Master of Kundalini Yoga and Doctor of the Psychology of Communication. We would like to acknowledge the following people for their dedication and service to the teachings throughout the development of this course. PRINCIPAL WRITER & COURSE DESIGN

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, Ph.D. SENIOR EDITORS

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, Ph.D., Nirvair Singh Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur Khalsa, Guru Raj Kaur Khalsa MANAGING EDITOR

Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa CONTRIBUTORS

Satya Singh Khalsa, Nirvair Singh Khalsa, Tarn Taran Singh Khalsa, Tarn Taran Kaur Khalsa, Guru Raj Kaur Khalsa, Dharma Kaur Khalsa, Satya Kaur Khalsa, Gurudass Singh Khalsa, Karta Singh Khalsa, Gurucharan Kaur Khalsa, Gurudarshan Kaur Khalsa, Guru Atma Kaur BOOK DESIGN

Guru Raj Kaur Khalsa PHOTOGRAPHY

Grace Hopper MODELS

Bhajan Kaur, Hargobind Singh Khalsa, Amrit Singh Khalsa, Ph.D., Siri Dayal Kaur Khalsa, Dharma Kaur Khalsa, Panch Nishan Kaur Khalsa, Sopurkh Singh Khalsa, Suraj Kaur COVER PHOTOGRAPH

Narayan Singh Khalsa COVER DESIGN

Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Special thanks to all the members of the KRI Teacher Training Executive Council who have guided and held the vision for this project.


KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING MANUAL LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION PILOT MANUAL DRAFT •

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MIND & MEDITATION

THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MANUAL comes from ancient yogic tradition. Nothing in this manual should be construed as medical advice. Any recipes mentioned herein may contain potent herbs, botanicals and naturally occurring ingredients which have traditionally been used to support the structure and function of the human body. Always check with your personal physician or licensed health care practitioner before making any significant modification in your diet or lifestyle, to insure that the ingredients or lifestyle changes are appropriate for your personal health condition and consistent with any medication you may be taking.

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Transformation

The aquarian teacher training level 2 Program



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TRANSFORMATION OVERVIEW

Welcome to Transformation: The Aquarian Teacher Training, Level II. This will give you an overview of the purpose, goals and approach of this second stage of training in Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan.

THE VISION OF THE AQUARIAN TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMS

is to produce teachers of Kundalini Yoga who demonstrate awareness in consciousness, excellence in teaching skills, and serve as an example of depth and maturity of character. The purpose of creating our global community of teachers has three main parts: 1. Prepare the foundations for the shift of humanity to the Aquarian Age by applying the legacy of the teachings, the Golden Chain and the example of Yogi Bhajan. 2. Serve and uplift individuals to be healthy, happy and holy. 3. Provide the opportunity for each person to awaken his or her capacity, character and sensitivity as a self-sensory human being who can be effectively intuitive, creative and compassionate. To achieve these goals we have created, with the direct guidance of Yogi Bhajan, a training program whose core process has three stages: 1. Aquarian Teacher: Foundations. This stage includes the fundamental understanding and experience that the basic self is always one with the One (Ek Ong Kar); understanding of the essential parts and character of a human being; and the fundamental principles and practices of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. Completing this stage makes you a certified instructor of Kundalini Yoga. 2. Aquarian Teacher: Transformation. This stage includes the projection of identity (Sat Nam); the embodiment of character through word and behavior; and the expansion and deepening of the teacher's state of consciousness. Completing this stage makes you a certified practitioner of Kundalini Yoga 3. Aquarian Teacher: Realization. This stage is the experience of ecstasy (Siri Wahe Guru) in all states of awareness. That experience is expressed in the teacher's words, actions, accomplishments, character, seva and reputation. Completing

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this stage of training makes you an acknowledged and certified teacher of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. Each stage has its own tasks, criteria and inner and outer disciplines. When Yogi Bhajan gave the task of completing this course of training to KRI he used the analogy of a B.A., M.A. and a Ph.D. In the intimacy of your own consciousness it is similar to youth, adolescence and adulthood. It is a continuous process with distinct stages of growth and development followed by accomplishments and service. The Aquarian Academy supports this process by providing the training, selection and support of trainers for each of the three stages. I welcome all of you who have taken on the challenges and opportunities of the Transformation stage of our training program. You are all instructors who have successfully completed studying the Foundations of Kundalini Yoga and applying your awareness to cultivating the identity of a teacher within yourself. To certify as an instructor is quite an arduous process filled with challenges and insights. In the first stage of study you must master a lot of content: kriyas, breathing, postures, philosophy, sadhana, meditation and the basics of instructing students. Along with this, many of you had to understand and commit to breaking old habits and establishing new ones that support the lifestyle and applied consciousness of these teachings. Kundalini Yoga is all about direct experience and the capacity to apply that experience to your life. It is not simply a collection of techniques, concepts, good ideas and inspiring beliefs. So I congratulate you for your efforts, accomplishments and heart. The Aquarian Teacher: Transformation is the second stage of training and personal development. It is fundamentally different from the first stage in which you established the foundations for becoming a teacher and for a lifetime of personal practice. The second stage of training is about the transformation and deepening of your own core capacities, character and consciousness. In this stage we will share a lot of new content in terms of information, techniques and themes, but the essence



Transformation overview

of this stage is about your establishing the ability to use your applied mind, applied intelligence and applied awareness. This is why we require at least two years of teaching experience during your mastery of the five modules of study contained in this stage. It will give you the opportunity to apply the ideas, habits and techniques to yourself, both in your own life, and to a broad range of different classes and students. In this stage of training, we are establishing depth: the capacity to reflect on your own experience and to analyze your own habits, communication, mind, and relationships, and then to act with consciousness, intuition and compassion. When this is fully embodied, it shows clearly in your words and actions through your kindness, service, willingness to accept and give feedback, capacity for effective teamwork and your focus on uplifting others. Critical to this stage is the practical ability to step back from your impulses, attachments, fears, and agendas and apply your neutral mind to your own inner conflicts, imagined limitations and projections. Each of the five modules of Transformation focuses on a crucial facet of your mind and consciousness. Think of all the modules as parts of a single process. To master the lessons of each module is to cut the facets of your own diamond mind so that it can scintillate and reflect your spirit. This stage of Transformation will take all that you have learned before and polish it and let you apply it. It is a time to clear inner conflicts, along with any mental and emotional blocks that might inhibit your full linkage to the Golden Chain and to the radiance and responsibility that comes with being an adept teacher. It is not a small thing to know how to zero your ego and allow the Infinite to serve through you. Without the ego constantly dividing the world into polarities there exists only God. The energy that generates, organizes and delivers all of our existence and experience. This is a special time in the evolution of human consciousness. People's sensitivity is changing and the pressure of the world growing and evolving is provoking us to become selfsensory humans. We who go through these courses and master the consciousness within ourselves are the teachers and guides of this new age. Yogi Bhajan presented his vision of the coming times and who we are to become as self-sensory human beings:


The idea is to build the foundation of a new age. Only people of experience will be talked to and listened to in the Age of Aquarius. For the past five thousand years religion has taught you to redeem your soul. But the soul is already redeemed! Rather you should redeem your “shallowism,” redeem your “cheapism” and your not being true to your own words. Redeem your “pimpism” and your “prostitutionism” of your self. Sensory humans will be deeply sincere. They will perceive and act on the fact that they are factual. We are a fact of life; A fact of existence born in the image of God. Understand that there is nothing more beautiful than you. The time of self-value has come. It is time “to be, to BE.” The time to know that “I am, I AM.” The time has come not to search for God, but to be God. The time has come not to trust in God, but to dwell in the working God. You must be aware of how ugly we have made this earth and of how beautiful it's supposed to be. Every grain of sand is God but we have to have our subtle body, our sophisticated self, in order to see it. That's why over the last thirty years of teaching I couldn't fit in with your concept of reality. You are a collection of molecules living by the pranic body. The pranic body and the psychic body in proportion and in conjunction with creation, make you clean and clear. You stop searching and you begin practicing. Your flow becomes as vast as the universe—and sometimes beyond the universe. I don't want anybody—because I want everybody! That's a difficult concept. I run with the flow of the psyche of universe. I go as it takes me, moves me and desires me to go. Man will finally stop cutting corners and come to live a real existence. We must help each other and deal with each other as equals. The love of existence—of our life and reality—with the flow of the psyche, will give us the flow of Self within the self. Our sensory system will be our archangel, protecting and glorifying us. Those who hustle and hassle will die suffering. Your mind will direct you toward the right channel. Our presence is our purity. We won't have to create fantasies and imagination of the unreal.


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Transformation overview

Aquarian Teacher TRANSFORMATION

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transformation overview

We will master ourselves and our service, character and commitment along with the most powerful thing, our individual grace. Our nobility is our projection. Gracious, kind and compassionate: these are our central features. Our creativity will be our sensory system. We will be overflowing with energy, touching the hearts of people and filling their empty cavities. Our actions will be great, and our flow will fulfill the hearts of others. We will create a new humanity. We will have a new sensory system and thus will create the Age of Aquarius. This is the fundamental character you must remember. This is how you will purify yourselves.” Learning Versus Knowledge The first problem for us is that we must learn. Not just acquire things or knowledge. We need clear eyes, not simply new sights to behold. In order to do that, Yogi Bhajan has given us an impeccable and grand discipline: a platform of practice on which we can test ourselves, heal ourselves, expand ourselves and gradually become Aquarian Teachers. That individual and group discipline produces the base of experience that becomes the wisdom within us, which gives strength and reality to our consciousness and actions. Our practice and training must go beyond the mind while also training the mind. Learning at this stage requires discipline, humility, vitality and courage. For the change is inside you. He explained this goal: “I am just trying to make you change, because you want to change but you don't change. I know you. It is very difficult for you to leave your habits. First we create habits and then our habits create us. Lots of people say, “We want to learn.” Not true! It is the last thing we want to do. Learning is as painful, as difficult, and as tragic as tragedy can be. Learning is training the subjective to read the objective. Learning is not about the object. Learning is not “Okay, I am going to do business. I am going to reach the goal.” That is objectivity. Learning is no such thing. Learning is first subjectivity and then objectivity. The problem is that no human has the nerves for it. Forgive me for that. You are wonderful people but you are bad students. That is just the way the Western mind is. You want what you want. The first principle of the world is to deserve what you want, not to desire what you want.


When we learn deeply it requires a real transformation: a transformation of thought, in the neurons, in the dance and intelligence of the trillions of cells in our body and in our capacity for intuition and subtlety. We want to learn, but it only happens with discipline and with the rhythm and regularity of applying that discipline. That change is painful. We want it without “deserving it.” We want to build and decorate our spiritual house without having to lay and test the foundations. Because laying solid foundations means digging, which often uncovers old assumptions, perspectives and beliefs that we don’t want to face or confront. An important part of this first problem of truly learning is avoidance. When something is painful, our negative mind protects us. We limit the feedback, advice and assessment that a teacher gives us or that our peers give us. We react against things that do not agree with our self-image and with the strategy and interests to which we have committed ourselves. Most of the time, we do not even know that we do this. We rationalize it. We slip into a quiet self-deception. We demonize the other. We form into cliques that only agree with us for their own reasons. It is a normal human behavior, but it is not the standard of a good student, or a good teacher. Yogi Bhajan put it this way: You are lying to yourself as a matter of habit…I know you. I know you what you think, I know what your base is, I know what your projection is. I can understand your psyche. I understand the frequency and I can compute it in a second. If I start telling everybody what I know, anybody who sees me coming will cross to the other side of the road. Because nobody wants to know! For Transformation to fulfill its purpose we must each commit to the discipline of regular practice and to the discipline of communication that is direct, open and real. We must never isolate ourselves from each other. Part of the growth that happens during this stage is the dynamic interaction with other students and teachers in authentic conversations from the heart.


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Conscious Communication Conscious communication is the second skill that it is critical to master during this stage of learning. We will dedicate an entire module to this key capacity. It is something we cultivate and improve in every moment of the Transformation training and, in fact, every day for the rest of our lives. Yogi Bhajan taught volumes on this topic and even completed his doctoral dissertation on it. It is central to success at this stage. Demonstrating this core capacity is one of the paramount criteria with which to assess your progress. Communication is a gift to know. Communication is a gift to understand. Communication is a gift to realize. If you do not use communication for these three things you had better shut up and not talk. Communication plays the most vital part in anybody's human life. Mostly seventy percent of your talk is unconscious and about sixty percent of your communication is purposeful. In that communication, you have an aim. You want to achieve something. That is another category. Third category is your approach to another person where you want to impress. You want to control. You want to be acknowledged. This is eighty percent. These are the three main categories of human talking. Three things are unfortunate. You have never learned to talk in order to know each other. You do not have a rapport with the other person at the same frequency. You do not have the strength to acknowledge the other person— to acknowledge not just the character of that person, but also the characteristic of that person. That is why you don't talk truthfully; because, truth is simple, straight and with a smile. You don't have to remember it. You have to say it. You know it and then you have to live it. It is so simple. You make it so complicated and then you mess yourself up in the end. You all die of your own entanglements and your life suffers because of your own entanglement. Communication is one of the best arts God gave you as human. It can make you the best! Worst of all is that you can't talk to yourself. That is the worst. Three things you can't do. You can't listen to yourself, you can't talk to yourself and you can't be yourself.

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When we learn deeply and we clear our inner capacity to perceive; when we stay open to listening and correction; when we apply the art of conscious communication as students and teachers, then, we become simply who we are. We share that with each person so they, too, may become themselves in the light and reality of their own spirit. The Core Capacities of a Teacher The third problem Yogi Bhajan identified is the challenge of character and virtues. We might call them the character and core capacities of a teacher. Having a good time learning something is not enough. We need to embed the lessons into our body, mind, habits and life. He forewarned us, “You do not develop in you the inner vitality to grab the virtues.” When we have enough vitality, devotion, focus and neutrality to invite virtues into our own character, then we can live them. He called this the ability to live and act personally, but decide impersonally. We live by certain virtues and character no matter what our personal characteristics, tendencies or situation may be. Consciously working on this depth of character is central to Transformation. From his first class to his last, Yogi Bhajan taught us to rise to our caliber and character. He spoke about this challenge this way: Life was not given to you for play. Life was given to you for one simple thing: to experience life. Life was given to you to experience life. Life was not given to you to experience traumas. Life is a caliber. It is given to you once, and it's not meant to be wasted in games. ••• You have two options: you can serve the ego or you can serve the truth. There are three ways to live: live by your spirit, live by your mind, or live by your ego. You cannot live by your mind because your mind is etheric. It goes back and forth. So you have to either live by your spirit, by your soul, or you have to live by your ego. If you live by your ego, then you are going to do funny things. Then you are going to do what you want, not what the universe wants.




What is the problem? The problem is that we don't have depth. We have dimensions. We have so many dimensions that we do not know which direction we have. So we have neither depth nor direction. All we have is dimensions. And we play games with our dimensions. We definitely play games with our ego. Heavily. We love games. Why? Because we do not know how to pass time. We love going outside ourselves because we do not know how to go inside ourselves. We have to create one situation or the other because we do not know how to meditate. We have to play games because we do not know truth. Why does a man who knows truth have to play games? In our caliber of consciousness the purity of our mind needs to have a base. Can you build any house where you don't build a base first? If a human being wants the life, and the life is without the base of character, do you think that life will be a life? And do you think without commitment there will be character? How can you know your character? First you know “dos” and “don'ts.” And when it comes to temptation you conquer it. That means you have character. All facets of the human body have to be controlled and characterized by the character of commitment, and that has to be tested by the principle of commitment. That's the beauty of Dharma. Dharma is nothing, my dear folks, but a principle commitment. It is not whether I am religious or I am not religious. I am a good man or bad man. That's not the test. The test is: Do I have principle commitment and do I live it? Are we crazy that we do not have character and constant strength and we still feel that we are human beings and we can carry our life? No! It won't happen. Treachery shall meet treachery, betrayal shall meet betrayal, noncommitment shall meet non-commitment. What is the result? Agony, pain, disease, and death. Who can say whether you have a committed character or not? Maya. Maya has a very subtle way to test you. Maya has to do just one thing. It splits your personality. Sometimes you might be worried, “Why do all these things come to harass me?” Why do all these things come to test


you? I give you one simple answer for all. Just to tell you how refined you are. Maya is a faculty to test your steel. Can you cut through time and space or can't you? Nothing can make you great. Nothing. If money can make you great, there are many billionaires here. Are they great? No. If a wife can make you great, there are people who have married ten times and divorced twenty times. If children can make you great, there are people who have a great line of them that goes on forever. Does your own self make you great? No. Great is when you impossibly make the impossible possible. When you project to make the impossible possible that is called? Students: Great. Yogi Bhajan: That needs a commitment and character in your base, because you need a projection into the Infinity. In reality, you are trying to stimulate your own self into the Infinity. That's a law. Assess your own character as you go through the Transformation training. Find your base. Establish your principle commitment without any split of personality. You, reality and God are a unity, a non-dual presence in every moment. The exploration of character begins with the dos and don'ts. The discovery of your depth and virtues happens with challenges and tests. The ecstasy of your character is effortless grace and innocence that sees the impossible done by the Infinite. Character, as understood in Kundalini Yoga, is not good or bad, but a property of consciousness. As a Master and as our teacher, what does Yogi Bhajan want in us and from us as practitioners of Kundalini Yoga at this second stage of training? What is the charge we accept from him to guide us as we open up to learning, to communicating consciously, to expanding our own consciousness and cultivating our character? He gave a lecture after twenty-three years and thirty days of teaching us. He evaluated our efforts as students and said exactly what he wanted and what we had to deliver at our next stage of growth and maturity as student-teachers.


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Now I want the result. I want you to grow up. Because as my students you do not understand what will happen to you. The whole world is going to fall apart in such a way that only the few of you will be the hope. The time has changed. It is not the Piscean age. You must go out and uplift people and not worry about yourself. Do not worry about facade and fads, and what you like and you dislike. Have you learned something? You are responsible. Nothing but responsible! And there is no other way but to be responsible. If you can't show a response to me then you have no relationship with me. If I can't respond to you then I have no relationship with you. That word “response” makes the word “responsible.” If I am not able to show you the response then I am no good. If you can't respond you are no good. Let's face the truth. We have to learn something today. And that is how to talk, how to work, how to live, how to have facets and facilities and how to have the characteristics and character to live. I want to live as me. I don't live like you. You don't have to live like me. You have to live like you. Each person must live it to his infinite psyche. Then there will be harmony. In order to deliver an effective response to another person or to a student, we need to be stable, trustworthy, and mature. We need to be able to apply our intuition and elevate them in consciousness to heal, become clear and live in the creative reality of their own soul. We need the caliber to do this in each and every circumstance. Transformation is organized with this challenge and goal in mind, so that all five modules are a single process. Each module has a central theme. That theme is reinforced in all the other modules. The links between the different ideas are forged through your experiences and by constant exercises and efforts to refine your ability to reflect, to be aware and to be consciously conscious of what you are learning. In addition to the central theme of each module, we have identified core capacities, which you must master. Powerful and clear intuition, the capacity for shuniya (living at the still center), the mastery of polarity, and the ability for harmonious communication are examples of those capacities. Each module cultivates those capacities and asks you to assess how well you can use those with yourself, with your stuXII

dents and in your life. We do not need you to simply teach about intuition. You must be intuitive, recognize it, and form an effective realistic relationship to that capacity. Most capacities are life-long studies. But at this stage you must demonstrate them, not simply understand them. References and links to web resources will encourage you to expand your knowledge, practice additional techniques and master background materials for each area of study. The courses themselves emphasize carefully chosen meditations, kriyas, and quotations. All needed information is presented in highly interactive learning environments. You will explore topics and discuss them with other students in both small and large groups. You will answer questions, generate questions, role-play, solve puzzles, and write short and long essays. You will have the opportunity to practice meditations deeply over an extended time. You will test and observe the application of these techniques and attitudes in your life. Experiencing the Master Pivotal to this path of study is a chance for you to encounter the energy, teaching, and character of Yogi Bhajan as directly and personally as you can. We will see many videos of him teaching classes. You will study those classes, feel the effects, and explore the edited transcripts, and then write on the key ideas that create a meaningful unity across the great diversity of topics. There is also a mentoring process that occurs throughout the time you are studying in these Transformation classes. It is designed to catalyze your capacity for self-examination. Ideally you will have a mentor who will help you reflect on how well you have integrated these teachings into your life, how deeply you have confronted and dealt with your own inner conflicts, and how your actions as a teacher embody grace, character and conscious communication. Questions about the content, philosophy and application of what you learn can be shared and explored in student groups, with your mentor and with your primary course teachers. For each of the five modules there is a brief overview of the specific goals for the course. The student manual will guide you through the materials, primary exercises and tasks, and link you to other resources on the Web that support all the modules.




As Director of Training for KRI, I welcome you to a new level of challenge and accomplishment. Many trainers have contributed to the development of these courses. Those contributions have been honored and brought to reality by an excellent development team headed by Guruka Singh Khalsa, Tarn Taran Kaur Khalsa, Gurucharan Kaur Khalsa, Tarn Taran Singh Khalsa, and myself. Creative ideas and practical tests of the exercises and processes in the modules have been an exciting group achievement over several years. The goal is to give you a course of study that authentically embodies the intentions and directions of Yogi Bhajan so that you may all experience the touch of the master. It is also part of a systematic presentation that can be used worldwide and in many languages. His vision was to have unique and vibrant differences all working in unity. Having been his student since he began teaching in the United States in 1969 up until his death in 2004, I know that indepth training has been paramount in his efforts. He wanted to give each of us a chance to be a realized, content human being, capable of happiness, excellence and fulfillment in the Aquarian Age—to give peace a chance and to give God a chance in every heart. Gurucharan Singh Khalsa KRI Director of Training



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KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING MANUAL LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION •

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“Without a spiritual teacher, you are in darkness. It is not true that with a spiritual teacher you are enlightened and without a spiritual teacher you are not enlightened. A spiritual teacher looks at things spiritually. What is spirituality? Consciousness and intelligence put together. Why can a spiritual teacher answer your questions satisfactorily and why couldn’t you yourself answer them satisfactorily? When you put forth a question, he comes out from the head and the heart at the same time. He understands your feelings. He understands where you are at. He understands what you want, and then he understands what it means to you in the long run, in the short run and now. And he knows your past also. With such a past, with such a present and with such a future, is it a possibility? If he says no, and you get sad. Either you learn from a spiritually conscious person or you will learn through time. What is the difficulty? Take any route you want and you are always free to do it.” —YOGI BHAJAN, IDENTICAL IDENTITY, VOL. I, P. 145

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• KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING MANUAL LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION PILOT MANUAL


MIND & MEDITATION

Welcome to MIND & MEDITATION

In this course, we intend to help you deepen your practice of meditation, clarify the relationship between you and your mind, and introduce some fundamental conceptsmin Humanology about the basic nature and dynamics of the mind. Yogi Bhajan used the term “Humanology” when referring to the applied psychology of Kundalini Yoga for human fulfillment. Using awareness as the primary tool and ultimately the goal, it looks at all aspects of the body, mind, spirit and being. The mind and our relationship to it are pivotal for our ability to act effectively, realize our true nature and fulfill our potential. If you engage your mind in this course and commit to developing your relationship to your mind, nothing can stand in your way as you excel, awaken, serve, teach and live this healthy, happy, and holy way of life. The Mind: Its Projections and Multiple Facets We have selected the materials and meditations to accompany the primary text, The Mind: Its Projections and Multiple Facets by Yogi Bhajan and Gurucharan Singh Khalsa. In The Mind, Yogi Bhajan has done what only a master of Kundalini Yoga could do: he outlines the structure of the functional parts of the mind in terms of our experience. He shares meditations to strengthen and balance the many dynamic parts of our minds and provides many insights in his lectures that help us confront and refine our own mind. He explains how the personal level of our experience connects to the impersonal levels of our being. In doing this, he fills in a gap that exists in the usual presentations of yoga philosophy. Most presentations of material on the mind give the wellknown samkhya categories of the cosmic mind—Citta, Manas, and Ahangkar—but leave out how these connect to the individual through the negative, positive and neutral minds. Many of these techniques and ideas that form the science of Humanology and Meditation were passed on through oral traditions to the best students, or were transmitted through the direct perceptual capacity of a student under the guidance and blessing of a master. Yogi Bhajan has made this


knowledge available to any student willing to connect with the consciousness of the Golden Chain, practice with discipline to refine the mind, understand with humility, and examine themselves and uplift others. This attitude of openness to all is part of the dawning consciousness of the Aquarian Age. With that consciousness comes the responsibility of each student to “self- initiate.” We must commit, bow to our higher awareness and come before the teachings and the touch of the Master with the openness and willingness to be corrected and to learn. Yogi Bhajan often said that the greatest gift a teacher gives is to be a mirror that reflects for the student the gap between their consciousness and their Self, and share techniques that provide the awareness in each moment in order to cover that gap. These teachings and techniques embody Yogi Bhajan. They mirror our unconscious habits and provide direction and guidance—what should we pay more attention to and which habits serve us versus those that continue to hinder our progress. They awaken us to recognize the infinite within and without. The goal is to increasingly dwell in awareness and act with compassion, courage and kindness. Yogi Bhajan often reminded us that we come to Earth in a human form not to seek anything but to recognize our humanity and the One infinite being that creates all and which is in all. We go astray seeking, grasping, declaring perfection that can only reside in the One and in all. As we go through this adventure of learning about and mastering our mind let’s remember that the goal is to train the mind to recognize what is. To love all that is. To see the One in each and all. It is not about becoming perfect, becoming better than others or attaining special powers. The greatest power is the ability to act with a neutral mind, to use intuition along with intelligence and to lean on the infinite through the power to create a sacred space in prayer.


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MIND & MEDITATION

THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS COURSE To enjoy and master this course you should be clear about what it is and what it is not. The positive objectives of this curriculum are to:

4Enhance the depth of your understanding of meditation. This course is an opportunity for you to assess your meditative skill and your approach to meditation and refine it. To master the mind you must master meditation. 4Help you focus on and explicitly elaborate your relationship to your own mind. Many people practice basic meditation without consciously assessing, understanding and commanding the mind. 4Increase your ability to observe neutrally, to become still, to clear your mind of distractions and intrigues, to recognize when you establish a state of shuniya, and to recognize the different functional parts of your mind. 4Experience and practice the use of intuition as a primary skill that comes from Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. 4Learn the structure of the mind as described in The Mind book. Examine all the impersonal minds, guna qualities of the mind, and the 9 aspects of the mind. 4Understand how to use the 27 projections of the mind. 4Examine how to apply this in your life and to your own mind. 4Be confident to teach and incorporate these ideas in your classes. No, you will not be a master of all this in six days of study. This journey will lay the foundations for ongoing personal development and increasing skills as a Practitioner in the Level 2 Aquarian Teacher Training: Transformation. This transformation process means you begin with this class. The class really has no end, only a good beginning.

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This course is not.... . . . just a compendium of meditations to practice. This is a course for you to confront and refine your mind and your approach to your mind. This course will not present all there is about the Humanology of the mind and meditation but it is an excellent foundation. Yogi Bhajan was like a great artesian well, constantly giving more and more with every lecture and in every relationship. Over the years he outlined with me and others several more books of material that go into how to apply these teachings to healing and therapy, how to understand the stages of meditation, how to deal with the thousands of sub-personalities and identical identities that populate our mental processes. He has spoken extensively to therapists, psychologists, healers and psychiatrists about the consciousness and approach of a Humanologist to deal with mental and physical problems and potentials. He looked ahead to the future challenges of mental health as we encounter new levels of sensitivity, stress, infodementia, cold depression, interlock neuroses, dissociative, blue gap phenomenon and much more. He has given us a vision of how to live with this new level of humanity and awareness as a Self-Sensory Human. This course lays the foundation, the concepts and the vocabulary for further study. Successful completion of this course will enhance your capacity as an instructor and prepare you to be a Practitioner as you complete the other core courses and continue to teach. We did not design this course to make you a therapist. It does not explore how to clinically apply this to mental disorders, but it will increase your ability to heal through meditation and use your skills to help people. Beginning the Journey Think of this training as a journey. We begin with our intention to learn the approach to the mind used in Kundalini Yoga, to refine our meditative capacity and to enhance our ability to teach. We invite our mind into our conscious presence, investigate its nature, and learn to master it so that it serves our consciousness and our soul. We will share our observations with our co-explorers and follow the road map laid out by Yogi Bhajan to recognize and develop the many parts of our functional minds. After we understand the fundamentals and experience the qualities of our mind in deep



MIND & MEDITATION

meditation, we will integrate what we have learned as we apply it to our daily habits and behaviors so we create a clear, intuitive, effective mind. The motto for this course is “If you conquer the mind, you conquer the world.” However, there is one caveat: the mind is not a thing. Not in the way a piece of wood or a stone is. It is a process. It is a network of relationships. It is energy seeking and relinquishing form incessantly. In many languages, there is no noun for the mind. In Spanish and German, words for the mind name what it does, such as remember, think or give thoughts. In English, it is easy to turn verbs into nouns and therefore we are easily misled into believing the mind is an object that can be separated from the matrix of emotions, relationships, and processes it exists within. To conquer your mind, cultivate a relationship to its actions and an awareness of its many functional parts necessary to carry out those actions. Form a relationship to your awareness, your self, your mind and your infinite being. Life will blossom with unlimited blessings. Many people have worked to create this course and to insure it has a good blend of experience as well as concepts.


Yogi Bhajan is the source. I worked extensively on the materials in The Mind and other books on this topic with Yogi Bhajan. Expert teams of trainers from our advisory group worked actively on design, syntax and editing. Satya Singh Khalsa, Gurdass Singh Khalsa, Karta Singh Khalsa, Tarn Taran Kaur Khalsa, Taran Taran Singh Khalsa, Nirvair Singh Khalsa, Shakti Parwha Kaur Khalsa, and many others contributed substantially to our efforts. Gurucharan Kaur Khalsa was invaluable for her editing and insight in producing the original book and course flow. Guru Raj Kaur Khalsa spearheaded our editing and layout of materials. Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa is the project manager and primary editor that kept the team aligned. I anticipate that as we teach this internationally, we will add additional teaching aids and processes as we continue to improve and deliver this foundation for the Humanology of the Mind. Humbly in Gratitude to Yogi Bhajan, Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, Ph.D., LPCC Director of Training


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CHAPTER ONE

Mind, meditation, & consciousness



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Meeting & Greeting each other PART ONE Leave your study groups behind. 4Stand up and began walking around the room chanting Sa Ta Na Ma. When the facilitator calls out stop, stand still with your eyes closed. Take in one deep breath and hold it. As you hold the breath, use your intuition to know exactly where to go to meet someone. 4When you exhale, open your eyes and go meet that person. Tell them how you sensed they were who you should meet and exchange with them something significant about you and your intention to take this course. 4After 2 minutes say Sat Nam and leave your new friend behind. Begin chanting as you walk about, once again. 4Repeat the procedure and find a new person to share your greeting with. Using your intuition, continue this process of meeting people. Find out where your intuition, the energy of the group, and the qualities in this moment of time will lead you. What will you explore and discover in one another?

PART TWO A Guided Self-Evaluation: Meeting Your Mind Prepare to meditate: Consciously write down on a sheet of paper four mental states or experiences that you consider when you meditate: 4The first is an experience in which you are fearful, anxious or apprehensive. 4The second state is a time or experience in which you were hopeful, enthusiastic or engaged and expansive. 4The third state is a time or experience in which you gained clarity, insight or growth. 4The fourth state is the same for all of us: simply write the word “nothingness” or “thoughtlessness.” 4After you identify and select each of the states, look at what you wrote for each of them and let your mind be clear about each one so that your mind can easily go to that state when you wish to during your meditation.


MEDITATION Sit straight in a comfortable meditative posture. Allow your breath to gradually become slow. Close your eyes or leave them 1/10 open. Become aware of the flow of your thoughts and the passing of your feelings. Notice the sensations that go through your entire physical body. Allow in all sensations and changes that come from your aura in the meridians and flows of your energy body. 4Allow your mind to meditate and become absorbed in the first thing you wrote down: the state in which your mind was fearful or anxious. Meditate for 3 minutes as you observe the flow of your thoughts and how these thoughts, in particular, affect your physical body, your energy body, your feelings and other thoughts. 4For the next 3 minutes bring into your mind the second thing you wrote down: when you were hopeful, enthusiastic or engaged and expansive. Once again notice the flow of thoughts, feelings and associations that come to you as you have your mind dwell on and process this particular experience. 4For 3 more minutes, bring your mind to dwell on the third experience: a moment of clarity or insight. Let your mind absorb into that experience, situation or state. 4Finally, for three minutes meditate on thoughtlessness. Allow the only thought in your mind to be thoughtlessness, nothingness, nonexistence or being zero. React to no thought. Accept or reject no thought. Observe how your mind behaves as you enter into this state of being. 4Now remain mindful for two more minutes. During this time remember all the things that you experienced in all the different conditions of the meditation process. You will share your observations with your team in a few minutes. Clarify what it's like to be within your own mind. Find a metaphor to describe what it's like to be within your mind. 4Take notes on your experience, capture the metaphors that represent what your mind is like and answer these simple questions to evaluate the relationship between you and your mind: KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING MANUAL LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION •

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PART THREE

FLASHWRITING: A METAPHOR FOR MY MIND What I noticed about my mind as I encountered the different types of thoughts during the meditation. What I noticed about the sensation of myself or my consciousness in relationship to my mind during the meditation process.

PART FOUR Small Groups Share your evaluation and your experiences from the meditation with your study group.

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PART FIVE

Interactive Group Exercise Meeting Your Mind & Meeting the Unknown In order to meet and to embrace our minds fully, we need to experience it under varied conditions. Your mind can behave quite differently in conditions that have lots of accurate information and frequent immediate feedback and in unfamiliar or unknown conditions where feedback is sparse or confusing. In such conditions, the mind responds with anxiety, stress and offer reverts to defensive postures. It becomes difficult to decide what is true and what is not; what is real and what is not; when to act and when to hesitate; whether we can succeed or even what success might be. We will play a little game. It will be fun and stimulating, and it will help to shake up what you think you know about yourself and your perceptions of the world around you. In this exercise you will enter the realm of the unknown, the unfamiliar. This will give you the opportunity to practice self-reflection, to step back and observe how your mind functions under different conditions. HERE ARE THE RULES OF THE GAME: First choose a partner. Decide who will go first and put the blindfold on. Your partner will be your guide. Guides: Be alert and tuned in to both your partner and the surrounding environments; move with caution. Blindfolded: Follow with trust and be attuned to your sensations, feelings and emotions. Guiding your partner on a journey: You will be guiding your partner on a short journey. To complete it successfully, you’ll need to work together and stay attuned to one another. Allow the blindfolded person to have their own experience, to trust, explore and accomplish. Talk very little—only when necessary. Guide with your touch. The Journey: Each participant has been given a travel ticket with its own unique trip. Guides, you must guide your partner to each of twelve stations in the sequence listed on their ticket—each journey is unique. There are four primary color codes, and within each of these there are three different textures, making


twelve stations in all. A sample travel ticket reads: Yellow 2, Red 1, Green 3, Blue 1. Each station has a color and a number associated with it. As the blindfolded person is guided to each station, they must press their hands firmly onto the target. Guides must make sure that they feel that station’s particular texture when they touch it. Be sure to go in the order on the ticket—no shortcuts! As the blindfolded person touches the target, read aloud the station name: Blue 2 or Yellow 4, for example. As the guide, you must find the stations which are randomly spread out around the designated area of the game. There will be monitors available to steer you in the right direction should you stray too far. The goal is to complete the journey in 15 minutes from start to finish. Second Journey: Once the first journey is complete, go back to the starting point and trade blindfolds and begin the second journey. After you’ve each completed your journey, return to the starting point and share your experiences with your partner. If the second journey is not completed at the end of 30 minutes and the trainer calls time, you must return with your partner to the starting point and call upon the experiences you completed.

PART SIX

Group Discussion Experiencing the Unknown When confronting the known and the unknown, what came up for you? Panic, anxiety, fear, desire to control, release, surrender? What grooves of the mind did you find yourself falling into in reaction to your emotions? The mind likes to predict; the mind likes to control; the mind likes to remember; the mind likes to fantasize. What did your mind do? How did your subconscious act? What helped or hindered your journey? Did it help to be second with the blindfold? How is it different for your mind to be in action versus sitting in meditation?


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PART SEVEN Self-Assessment for mind & meditation

Date: __________________

For each of the following statements rank yourself on a scale of one to nine. Marking one or two means very little, not at all or completely disagree. Marking a five means neutral or you cannot tell or doesn't apply. However, do your best to give a mark for each item based on your normal experience of yourself, your meditations and the experience you just went through. Marking an eight or nine means very much, completely agree or definitely true for me. Mark all of these questions quickly, according to your first instinct.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

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I easily focus my mind. I easily find the point of stillness within me that lets all thoughts go without reaction. I understand and can produce the state of shuniya in an instant. I recognize the mental intrigues that my subconscious tries to play between my ego and my mind. I consciously cultivate my intuition regularly through meditation. I can guide the flow of my thoughts through the three minds so that I can act with intelligence. I have a strong and balanced negative mind. I have a strong and balanced positive mind. I have a strong and balanced neutral mind. I can identify which of the nine aspects is strongest and weakest within my dynamic personality. I use both intuition and intelligence to serve my consciousness. I have a habit to commit my mind by the use of the committed word. I can identify the qualities and the gunas of my mind as my ego over-stretches or under-stretches itself. When my mind over-stretches with the ego, I practice bringing it back to the sattvic quality with buddhi, and only then do I act. I do sadhana and consciously clear my subconscious regularly. When I recognized a fear going through my mind, I poke, provoke, confront and elevate that taught rather than simply moving away from it or hiding within a positive feeling. I use the sensation of vastness to become zero. I use the feeling of love and bhakti, or devotion, to become zero. I use the process of letting go, forgiving and releasing to become zero. I cultivate my daily, promoting habits in order to balance my tattvas and master my mind. I do not identify with my mind. When I meditate, I can sense my sensations. When I meditate, I can sense myself sensing my sensations. When I meditate, I can sense my awareness sensing my sensations. When I meditate, I can release my sense of self and become selfless in the infinite matrix of what is. When I meditate, I can use my intuition & my intention to merge into any object or person in the universe. Whatever I feel or sense, I can synchronize with my awareness into infinity to create a neutral state that produces healing and a neutral presence.



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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I can easily locate, recognize and teach the Blue Pearl meditation point which we also called the Neelkant. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I often act on impulse before I know what it is. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I use my meditative mind when I meditate, but often, I fail to use it when I'm in situations of conflict at work or in interpersonal relationships.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I know which kind of foods help my mind be meditative and I choose to include those in my diet. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I can merge my mind into the shabd guru. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I control my mind, rely on my intuition, trust my consciousness and act with fearlessness. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I create the state of shuniya each day and in each important moment and place within that an intention that comes from my neutral mind and fulfills my soul.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I can meditate for 2 1/2 hours without distraction or movement. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I understand & can teach how the dynamics of the mind generates the 9 aspects and 27 projections.



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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION BALANCE THE MIND 1 Yogi Bhajan • February 11, 1992

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1. Sit in Easy Pose. Hands are locked in front of the heart center, palm to palm, the four fingers folded around the opposite hand. Look at the tip of the nose. Squeeze the hands. 3-1/2 Minutes. Synchronize the entire body. Squeeze the entire body as tightly as you squeeze the hands. 3-1/2 Minutes. Comments: Squeeze like you are squeezing water out of a stone. You will find an air vacuum in your palms. It will give you sensitivity of how life flows. Experience it. Squeeze the hands with maximum tightness. Look at the tip of nose, concentrate, and squeeze. You will breathe differently, exist differently, and start to eliminate disease from your body. By fixing the optical nerve—bifocally to zero angle—the pineal and the pituitary come to one obedience.

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2. Immediately lie down on your back. Bring the arms and legs up to 90°—straight and tight. Palms are facing the knees. Spread the fingers wide. 2 Minutes. 3. Bring the knees to the chest and wrap your arms around the knees. Bring the nose to the knees. Don’t cross the feet. Stabilize. 3-1/2 Minutes.

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4. Come into Corpse Pose and let the body relax. The Kulwant Singh Version of Chattr Chakkr Varti is played. 1 Minute. Comments: Nap. Hypnotically sleep. Conquer the environments. Don’t let the body move but imagine you are out of your body, let your soul look at it, and dance.

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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION BALANCE THE MIND 1

5. Cat stretch to each side and transition to standing. 30 Seconds.

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6. Dance with hands up above the shoulders. Keep the hands up the entire time. Chattr Chakkr Varti continues playing for 2-1/2 Minutes. Rhythms of Gatka is played for the remainder of the dance. Keep only one foot on the ground at a time. Dance vigorously. 11 minutes total. Open the hips, shake the rib cage, tighten and loosen the neck, the face. Every part of the body has to dance. Eight twists of the body in one beat. Raise the Kundalini. Infinite healing can take place. This is an Ashta—eight— beat rhythm, an Ashtang Natiem. It is called Shiva Dance.

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7. Relax and sit down. 3-1/2 minutes. 8. Massage the armpits deeply; each hand massaging the opposite armpit concurrently. 1-1/2 minutes. This will stimulate the three nervous systems and give you a new life. 9. Beat the upper part of your chest with your fists. 1/2 minute. Then beat the thighs just above the knee. Fast and heavy. It has a soothing effect. 1/2 minute.

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BREAK THE MIND’S HYPNOTIC TRANCE An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

October 31, 1994

What does it mean to qualify yourself? How do we rise above the quagmire of our emotions and feelings? In this lecture, Yogi Bhajan challenges us to identify our higher values and live to them; quit wearing the masks and break through to our true Self—the Soul. We are known by what we do, who we’re married to, how much money we have; but are we ever known as a human being. Find yourself—“that is the real purpose of life.” An edited transcript of this class is included in your Study Guide.

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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION BREAKING THE PISCEAN HYPNOTIC TRANCE Yogi Bhajan • October 31, 1994

POSTURE:

Sit in a comfortable, meditative posture.

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MUDRA:

Bring your hands into fists with the thumb over the middle finger; place them in front of the chest about six inches apart. Point your Jupiter finger up to the sky. 1. Begin moving the hands alternately, in a precise way, forward and back, in a mechanical, slow, almost jerky, motion—with a steady, even cadence. Do it with full awareness. 6 Minutes.

2. Continue the movement of the hands and bring the eyes to the tip of the nose. 3 Minutes. 3. Continue the movement and begin chanting “Thou” with each movement of the hands. 4 Minutes. 4. Close the eyes. Still the hands and relax them down. Come to absolute silence and stillness. Practice nonexistence. For a moment forget who you are. 6 minutes.

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TO END:

Inhale deep and stretch the arms up. Exhale. Inhale deep and twist to the left. Stretch. Exhale in the center. Inhale deep and twist to the right. Stretch. Exhale in the center and relax. Breathing through the mouth will relax you very fast. It is a very vital exercise.

EFFECTS:



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Small Groups Gather in your small groups and discuss the following: How do you qualify yourself? What is your answer to “Who are you?” Did you have a reaction to Yogi Bhajan’s discussion about qualifying God? In your daily life, what things can you identify as operating from a place of hypnosis? What parts of the lecture did you identify with as a Teacher and the caliber and projection of that role?

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Consciousness and the Mind: Its Qualities, Nature, and Dynamics

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS? Is it simply our thoughts? Or is thinking not consciousness at all? What is the nature of the mind and its relationship to what we know as consciousness? How do we reign in these 1,000 thoughts per blink of the eye and master the mind? What would mastery even look like? These are some of the many questions that we’ll explore. Everything is process from non-being into being; being into non-being. Without qualifying our existence, we live in tragedy. When we qualify ourselves, intuition and selfreliance awaken the god within. We can truly know that God and me, me and God, are one. (All that exists and does not exist is what we call god.) Each moment—what we perceive—is made up of our tattvas composing themselves spontaneously and instantly in response to the environment, our thoughts, emotions, and feelings. The mind creates multiple windows with many perspectives, many parts; in an individual it looks like many personalities. It is only the Self that is continuous, beyond space and time, because it is both existence and non-existence together. MIRRIAM-WEBSTER DEFINES CONSCIOUSNESS AS: 1 a : the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself b : the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact c : AWARENESS; especially : concern for some social or political cause 2 : the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : MIND 3 : the totality of conscious states of an individual 4 : the normal state of conscious life 5 : the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes


Qualities of Consciousness So as Kundalini yogis, do we equate consciousness and awareness? Is there a difference between being in a heightened state of awareness and consciousness? Let’s take a look at a few more terms in the vocabulary of consciousness. There are many aspects of consciousness and these terms represent a stratification of consciousness, increasing in subtly and refinement. Arousal—activation, creates an interchange Alertness—begin to scan, relate the object of arousal to the environment or yourself Attention—broad and focused, limited Experience—composed of arousal and alertness; what you think you know Consciousness—awareness in relation to something else Awareness—qualified state of non-existing existence Shuniya—Opens to intuition; the silence and stillness beyond awareness Intuition—applied awareness; a place from which awareness can act Turiya—no scope, pure being Intention—our neutral mind projecting into infinity as creator Metacognition—Observe the observed These are the qualities of consciousness. Consciousness in Yogic Terms In yogic terms we apply the following terms to consciousness: Awake—engaged with the senses; Sleeping/Dreaming—moving through action automatically; Sleepless/Dreamless—non-existence existing; and Turiya—“awakened sleep,” always being in a state of heightened awareness in which intuition is a living reality—a natural part of your daily rhythm.


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What do we really see? The nature of the mind and consciousness is so vast that it is often hard to speak to; we get lost in a sea of terms, when truly the mind is meant to serve as a rudder toward our purpose—our Soul. In Chapter One of The Mind, Yogi Bhajan speaks about this fundamental role that the mind should play. But it demands a relationship. The mind must be shaped, framed, and sometimes even cajoled (especially when the ego gets involved in the play). The fundamental question is whether you will be subject to your mind or your mind will be subject to you. What is the answer? What are the primary playing pieces? What is the field? Implicit in the discussion of consciousness and the mind is the metaphor of seeing—even when we don’t physically see with the eye, we speak of seeing in the ‘mind’s eye.’ If we are going to master the mind, we must understand some of the inherent challenges to consciousness. What do we really see? Scientists have been studying cognition, action, and perception and their relationships for many years now. From what we know today, the mind is fundamentally a storyteller. The body acts and the mind interprets. The quality of consciousness called Experience and Attention are keys to understanding the mind’s uncanny ability to not see.

A Short Video While you watch this short video, your job is to count how many times the ball is passed among the players.

Large Group Discussion Because our mind’s were directed to attend to something—to pay attention—it narrowed the focus and we were unable to see, literally, the pink elephant in your living room. What are we not seeing in our lives? How does this affect your sense of knowing or witnessing? What do we really see? What are some of the things you attend to that may be blinding you to the “pink elephant”? Do you think there is a way to truly see in our day-to-day lives? Or are we programmed to our own blindness by Alertness, Attention, and Experience? What’s the key to breaking through to higher levels of awareness?

Creating our Reality Much of the current research is putting into stark relief our notions of free will and our perception of ourselves as the actor and meaning-maker in our own lives. How can what we know about the mind and the way it works as yogis address these questions? This is the question posed by Guru Nanak in the first pauree of Japji. By thinking and thinking, what actually happens? We’re trying to understand the mind and the only mechanism we have is the mind, and really we’re trying to go beyond the mind to this place called consciousness—it’s tricky work.

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SCIENCE BOX: Consciousness and the Brain On the flow of thought and consciousness, Dr. James comments: “Consciousness is not an entity, not a thing, but a flux and system of relations; it is a point at which the sequence and relationship of thoughts coincide illuminatingly with the sequence of events and the relationship of things. In such moments it is reality itself, and no mere 'phenomenon,' that flashes into thought; for beyond phenomena and 'appearances' there is nothing. Nor is there any need of going beyond the experience-process to a soul; the soul is merely the sum of our mental life, as the 'Noumenon' is simply the total of all phenomena, and the 'Absolute' the web of the relationships of the world. “Have you asked what kind of mental fact is your intention of saying a thing before it is said? It is an entirely definite intention, distinct from all other intentions, an absolutely distinct state of consciousness. . . . and yet how much of it consists of definite sensorial images, either of words or things? Hardly anything! Linger and the words will come into the mind; the anticipatory intention, the divination that there is more. But as the words that replace it arrive, it welcomes them successively and calls them right if they agree with it; it rejects them and calls them wrong if they are not. It has, therefore, a nature of its own of the most positive sort and yet what can we say about it without using words that belong to the later mental facts that replace it? The intention to-sayso-and-so is the only name it can receive.” On the brain and its process, Dr. Baars suggests the metaphor of a global workspace of the mind: [the brain works with] a fleeting memory capacity that enables access between brain functions that are otherwise separate. This makes sense in a brain that is a brainweb, viewed as a massive parallel distributed system of highly specialized processors. In such a system, coordination and control may take place by way of a central informa-


tion exchange (the global workspace), allowing some specialized processors—such as sensory systems in the brain—to distribute information to the system as a whole. [The] theory may be thought of as a theater of mental functioning. Consciousness in the metaphor resembles a bright spot on the stage of immediate memory, directed there by a spotlight of attention, under executive guidance. The rest of the theater is dark and unconscious. For sensory consciousness, the bright spot on stage is likely to require the corresponding sensory projection areas of the cortex. Once a conscious sensory content is established, it is distributed widely to a decentralized “audience” of expert networks sitting in the darkened theater, presumably using corticocortical and corticothalamic fibers. This is the primary functional role of consciousness: to allow a theater architecture to operate in the brain, in order to integrate, provide access, and coordinate the functioning of very large numbers of specialized networks that otherwise operate autonomously.” (Baars 2003) Dr. Hawkins speaks of consciousness in terms of feeling your cortex, and qualia, the expression of the senses as ‘bytes’ of information in the brain: “[Your] cortex has a clever learning algorithm that naturally finds whatever structure exists and captures it (p. 127) . . . . Brains are pattern machines. It’s not incorrect to express the brain’s functions in terms of hearing and vision, but at the most fundamental level, patterns are the name of the game. No matter how different the activities of various cortical areas may seem from each other, the same basic cortical algorithm is at work.” (p. 62) Hawkins goes on to separate consciousness into two categories: self-awareness and qualia (p. 196). Hawkins discusses qualia in terms of the qualitative differences between the senses, offering two possible explanations for the phenomenon: (1) That sensory input is processed


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uniquely prior to reaching cortex, and that this processing is connected to the emotional centers; and (2) That the structure of perceptual input itself determines qualitative differences in experience. In support of the latter he cites the fact that the optic nerve has a million fibers and carries primarily spatial information, while the auditory nerve has only thirty thousand fibers and carries more temporal information. He reduces self-awareness to declarative memory, providing the following thought experiment as proof: “Let’s assume you go through today and wake up tomorrow. But just as you’re waking up, I flip a switch and erase the last twenty-four hours [from your memory]. You would have zero memory of the previous day. From your brain’s perspective, yesterday never happened. I would tell you it’s Wednesday and you’d protest, “No, it’s Tuesday. I’m certain of it.” Everyone you met with on Tuesday would say you had been conscious throughout the day. . . . Finally, shown a video of you having lunch, you gradually become convinced that the day did happen, even though you have no memory of it. . . . Your belief that you were conscious disappeared only when your declarative memory was erased.” (p. 197) Dr. Bell, when speaking about artificial intelligence (AI) and the brain as analogous processes, concludes the following: There are two themes regarding AI and the organic processes of the brain. “The first is the universality of cycles (or loops): sets of variables that affect each other in such a way that any feed-forward account of causality and control, while informative, is misleading. “The second theme is based around the observation that a computer is an intrinsically dualistic entity, with its phsycial set-up designed so as not to interfere with its logical set-up, which executes the computation. The brain is different. When analysed empirically at several different levels (cellular, molecular), it appears that there is no satisfactory way to separate a physical brain model (or algorithm, or representation), from a physical implementational substrate. When program and implementa-

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tion are inseparable and thus interfere with each other, a dualistic point-of-vew is impossible. Forced by empiricism into a monistic perspective, the brain–mind appears as neither embodied by or embedded in physical reality, but rather as identicial to physical reality.” Ted Honerick on the world of the mind and the world of existence: “. . . in thinking about the mind and what exists, we have been stuck with two categories. These are, in the most general terms, the mind-independent worlds and mental worlds. It is not only philosophers of the mentally realist kind who have been stuck with not only mind-independent but also mental worlds. Philosophers skeptical about mental worlds, indeed with some reason disdainful of them, have nevertheless not escaped them, but write more and more books trying to accommodate them. “To come to the very nub, what we need, in order to deal first with perceptual consciousness and thereafter with all of consciousness, is a new category: worlds of perceptual consciousness. They take a good deal from both mind-independent and mental worlds. We do not need new kinds of properties or events. We need this different way of looking at what we have got. Or, to remember my doubts and worry, and to be properly hesitant, we need some new way like this, something along these lines. We need some view of perceptual consciousness as existence, or, if you like, existence as perceptual consciousness. We need an idea to the effect that for something to be conscious is for a world to exist, although certainly not a world wholly dependent on it. This, in my submission, is what we have missed out on in being anchored in the two categories of mind-independent and mental worlds.”



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Meditation and the Need to Control the Mind: Man Jeetai Jag Jeet!

Guru Nanak told us: Man jeetai jag jeet (Siri Guru Granth Sahib, page 6, 28th pauree of Japji Sahib) By conquering your mind, you conquer the world.

The mind has no basic reality of its own. The mind’s 1000 impulses per second are not personal; they are not yours or your mind’s. Some of those impulses become thoughts, and some of those thoughts you react to. How you select which thoughts, which fleeting moments, impulses to turn into thoughts, and how you respond and creatively interact with those thoughts is what you know as your mind. Look at the figure on page 126 of The Mind for an image of this process at work. So if you’re not controlling your mind consciously, what is? There are many possibilities: your subconscious, your unconscious, your shadow self, your projections, your insecurities, you name it. “If we can master the use and command of the mind, we can enjoy this world and live truthfully, gracefully, and prosperously.” (The Mind, p. 3) So how do we manifest this mastery? How do we bring under our conscious control this runaway train that is the mind? How do we make it our servant? How do the three gunas, the five tattvas and the three functional minds along with the universal minds function together to create our reality? And how do we learn to discern and interpret that reality? First, we recognize that we don’t make up reality, we qualify it; and second, we qualify ourselves through awareness, through meditation.


Know Your Guna First we need to understand the basic constructs of the mind’s many parts. Let’s begin with the gunas which are part of the Universal mind—the source of all these myriad thoughts. There are three gunas as describe on pages 30 and 31 of The Mind. They are in constant dynamic play with your tattvas to project your personality, your quality, and your caliber. Each of the gunas has a particular role to play in your life as a human being; but in your life as a yogi and a Teacher, certain lifestyle habits must be incorporated and mastered into your daily life to support the sattvic guna—the angelic way of being. We often associate a particular guna with particular tattvas. The tattvas are correlated with the first five chakras. First Chakra—Earth Second Chakra—Water Third Chakra—Fire Fourth Chakra—Air Fifth Chakra—Ether Because of this association with the wheels of power in the body, the tattvas are limited to the human realm. So the tamasic guna is often correlated to the Earth and Water elements or tattvas—dense, heavy, cold. The rajasic guna is often associated with the Fire element among others—intense, hot. The sattvic guna is most often associated with Air and Ether—light, elevated, pranic elements. The tattvas don’t expand into the realms of consciousness or radiance (Sixth, Seventh or Eighth Chakras). These are the godly realms of the human consciousness. Yogi Bhajan, in speaking about the gunas, challenges us to observe the animals. (The Mind, p. 34) The tamasic qualities: carnivorous, fighting, surviving; rajas: territorial, majestic, leaders; and sattvic: caring for their young, mourning their dead, and building their homes. The human being’s primary guna is sattvic; we are to be angels; it is our nature. Instead, he insists we look at our own inability to live up to even the animal kingdom.


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Elevating the Tattvas We must use meditation to elevate the tattvas so that the sattvic guna can be expressed naturally in our everyday lives. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for rajasic or tamasic qualities; they are what makes us more complete as humans and able to act with courage or patience. But to live in peace and in harmony with ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our nation, and the world, we must master the tattvas and recognize the guna from which we are responding and consistently elevate and uplift ourselves so that we can uplift others.

Experience the Mind Much like our ‘gorilla experiment,’ there have been many further studies that question our idea of a free, independent agency of action in the human mind. What we can truly know? Do you act by free will? Or is your free will determined by circumstance, nature, and even biology? And what happens to the identity if “free will” is no longer a concept we can hang our hats on? Who are we and how do we experience ourselves in the mind without the notion of ‘free will’? There exists a choice at the level of consciousness and neutrality; but not once the sequence is activated from a nonneutral space. Transcending the gross elements of the mind is the only way that we can truly express our divine nature. To transcend these elements we must gain some level of mastery over their expression: how much room we give them, how much time we dwell on them. There have long been traditional stages of meditation: Pratyhara (be and not be; allow the senses to equalize), Dharana (focus the senses or concentration), then Dhyana (let go and dwell) and finally Samadhi (merger in consciousness; all is personal and infinite). How do we control the mind? We can concentrate to eliminate a thought or go into deeper levels of it. We can concentrate on thoughtlessness—non-thinking. We can project ourselves into the vastness of Infinity. We can merge into the soul, through neutrality and love. We can practice stillness or shuniya. We can dwell on in the quality of sattva that this stillness and surrender of action engenders. Or we can use paradox to be and not be at once;

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this breaks up the hypnotic process of thoughts that uses polarity to entangle you. We can seed the body with the quality of stillness—shuniya—to stabilize the self and simply allow all the feelings and sensations We can use distraction to control the flow of thoughts in the mind. Mantra is an excellent tool for distraction as is the mala. Mantra is basic but there are subtleties in the naad that affect the mind’s basic guna: Do you speak from gross tattvas? Do you do it as mind? Do you do it in love? Do you allow its intention? Do you become completely shuniya—zero—relaxed and let it flow from you, the you that is in every atom? This is ajappa jap. Can you speak from this place and only this place? This is mastery. Conversely, when are we convinced that we are in control but we are not, what happens? When we feel something is important or valuable or it is our wish, our desire, as if it must be, this same proposition or assumption limits what we perceive and believe to be possible, instead of just allowing what is. Science Box What do we really know? Much of science is beginning to explore these realms that tended to fall into the laps of philosophers or sages. The gross and the subtle now merge in the laboratory. Wilbur, remarking on the inability to truly trust our ‘sight’ notes the following phenomenon: “‘change blindness’—the bizarre, but absolutely normal, inability of people to notice quite massive changes to a scene so long as the changes are masked by an interval where no scene is presented or where the change is very gradual. This leads naturally to the big question of whether what we call visual experience is a kind of ‘grand illusion,’ lacking the depth, continuity and qualitative richness which it ‘appears’ to possess. Another psychological-level phenomenon involves the misattribution of agency. It is remarkably easy to get people to believe with complete conviction that they intentionally performed an action which was not at all their doing. As Blackmore notes, such findings put considerable stress on our conceptions of freedom, agency and self.”



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Interactive Group Exercise Clarity and Japji: The First Pauree

Chant the first pauree of Japji together 11 times and allow yourself to transcend the ‘thinking and thinking’ and get absorbed in the sound current.

Group Discussion What state of consciousness is achieved through japa? What level of consciousness did you perceive yourself moving through and beyond in order to achieve that state?

FIRST PAUREE OF JAPJI SAHIB:

socY soic n hoveI jy socI lK vwr cupY cup n hoveI jy lwie rhw ilv qwr BuiKAw BuK n auqrI jy bMnw purIAw Bwr shs isAwxpw lK hoih q iek n clY nwil ikv sicAwrw hoeIAY ikv kUVY qutY pwil hukim rjweI clxw nwnk iliKAw nwil ]ñ]

Looking again at the English translation, what lines particularly speak to you and your perception of consciousness in your daily life—the way your own mind works?

Sochai soch na hova-ee jay sochee lakh vaar.

Small Group Exercise

Chupai chup na hova-ee jaylaa-ay rahaa liv taar.

English Mantra

What does Guru Nanak mean by cleverness and in what ways does that same cleverness obstruct your ability to perceive the truth, speak the truth, and act from the truth?

Bhukhi-aa bhukh na utree jay bannaa puree-aa bhaar. Sehs si-aanpaa lakh hoheh ta ik na chalai naal. Kiv sachi-aaraa ho-ee-ai kiv koorhai tutai paal.

The following is an English Mantra that uses the mirror effect in language to emphasize the essential nature, the elements of the language and the truth therein:

Hukam rajaa-ee chalnaa naanak likhi-aa naal. By thinking & thinking, nothing happens, though I may think a thousand times. Deep in silence, nothing happens, though the string of longing plays. The hungry people stay hungry, with the weight of the world on their backs. You may be incredibly clever, but you can’t take that Home with you. How can I live the Truth? How can I cut through the net of lies? Walk in God's Will within and without. O Nanak! It's written in your Soul. || 1 ||


So Be It, Be It So Be to Be Get together in your small groups and practice this English mantra. Place emphasis on various words; play with the language until you, as a group, find the resonance that speaks to you as truth. Once you’ve identified the mantra you want to work with and the naad that expresses the truth, in neutrality, of the mantra, repeat it for 5 minutes in a soft monotone. Then take another 5 minutes to discuss the effects of these mantras on your psyche, your identity, and your notion of ‘free will.’


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MEDITATION from the mind book Meditation to Command Your Five Tattvas

62 minutes Find this meditation on page 152 of The Mind.

Dancing and Movement 11 minutes We’ll close the day with dancing and movement. Release the tattvas; let everything go and dance freely from your heart. Break through to your angelic nature and enjoy the bliss of being one with God.

Small Group Discussion What guna do you believe your personality most consistently relies upon to express itself? Which tattvas do you associate most with yourself and your essential nature? Identify the ways that the three gunas serve each other in expressing the perfect human psyche that is the healthy, happy, holy way of life? If we can learn to act from the self in stillness, then there is no time. Yogi Bhajan gave us nine seconds to process, sense, and act—beyond that is a lie. Why? What is the relevancy of the control of your mind to your life personally?

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CHAPTER TWO

Awakening intuition: synchronize Your brain & your mind



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The Brain: How It Works

The Brain and the Mind Connection In Kundalini Yoga we recognize the mind, with all its facets and tricks, and we train it. We equally recognize, cultivate and optimize the brain through mudras, meridians and breath. We approach the brain and mind together in order to be healthy, happy and holy. We use many techniques: some are primarily physical and employ reflexes, meridians, glandular and nervous system stimulation and directed movement to directly change our brain. We also use “mental” techniques in meditation using attention, mantra, inner stillness and the senses that create profound changes in the brain and other bodily systems. The brain and the mind are so intimately intertwined, it can seem that the mind is just the brain or that the mind is what the brain does. The sensations, feelings, emotions and perceptions are just the outcomes of having a cortex as some scientists have suggested. The state of our brain and nerves affects how we experience our mind and our self. As Yogis we experience and understand that the mind, in its universal sense, is far greater than the brain itself. The mind has a distributed existence throughout the Cosmos as well as an individually located nature with our brain and body. Philosophically, we can say that in deep meditation there is no separation of space or time; we experience the Cosmos directly through our self as our self. Because Kundalini Yoga is based on experience and our capacity to apply that experience, we enjoy the various philosophies but approach the mind in a practical way that engages both a dimension of personal and universal functions. The brain is the most complex, creative and adaptive concentration of matter that exists. Nothing else that science has explored, from the structure of the sun and the swirling gases of galaxies to the intricate patterns of microtubules in a cell, is layered with so many levels of feedback and sensitivity, interacting and changing, all the way from genes to the environment, as our brain and nervous system. Its function and health are essential for a realized life and a clear, intuitive


mind. The interplay between all these factors—mind and brain, thought and neurology, psychology and biology—is a constant reality woven into the subtle design and practice of our meditations and kriyas. The Yogic Effect: Integrating the Subtle and Scientific Yogi Bhajan constantly shared the effects of the kriyas in terms of how they affect the brain and nervous system. Sometimes he would describe meditative phenomenon by translating from the ancient scriptures and sometimes by using the more modern language of scientific and anatomical terms. He saw that science would progress very rapidly in the next few decades. Concurrent with that progress will be an entirely new language to describe and understand these very effective practices. He would imitate and foreshadow that future integration of the subtle and the scientific by saying things like: they will say your meditation was at a depth 2.3 megawatts at a projective frequency and correlation of soand-so with Infinity. He said we will have the instruments to measure each atom of intelligence in the body and the projections of the aura as well. We will not have to guess if someone is in meditation or telling the truth or accomplished in their experience of the self and infinity. We will have technical shorthand for the states of consciousness that we can now only experience ourselves or speculate that someone else has attained. Fortunately the complexity and sensitivity of our mind and brain means that very simple but precise actions can engage innate capacities for perception, intuition, creativity and communication. Even the realms of spirit can be accessed as we calm our minds and nerves to allow space within us—beyond our ego and emotions. Yogis have mapped the way to attune the Self through the body’s basic rhythms that they observed and tested carefully over time. Breathing is the classic example. Breathing is so natural, automatic and ever-present that we do not notice its tides and moods or its enormous effects on our energy, perception and judgment. Which nostril has a


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dominant flow of breath affects brain function; the flow of thoughts and emotions; and even the “higher” functions of judgment, aesthetic preferences, and the sense of identity— who we are. As yogis, we attend to these basic patterns of energy and use them to communicate and synchronize with and our body and mind. Many of our lifestyle choices and yoga practices honor these inborn patterns as gifts to be cared for and maintained through considered and consistent practice—sadhana. Tour of the Brain Let’s take a quick tour of the brain, its development and structure, and review a few basics. We learned some descriptive anatomy and fundamental physiology of the nervous system in Foundations—Level One Instructor training. Here, we will touch on a few of those basics and look at the brain through several different lenses that relate to our priorities as yogis. We will observe adaptive and sensitive the brain is and how our actions and thoughts affect its development and use. Yogi Bhajan said we need two things: intuition; and subjective control of our thoughts and mental projections. Both of these need optimal brain function as well as a strong frontal cortex. First we will look at how the brain develops into this magnificent sensory instrument. By looking at what we know about development we can become aware of:

Then we will consider how we react to, perceive, and control pain and what that tells us about why many yoga exercises are so effective for pain relief. We will note a few characteristics about how the brain perceives music and why mantra is so effective. Finally, we will look at the powerful ability of the brain and mind to heal and change through placebo with only a few words to prime and direct the subconscious. There is a vast amount of literature and research you can explore to your hearts delight using the resources on the internet. The material here is composed mainly from the lecture series Grey Matters, broadcast on WebTV by the University of California at San Diego. These lectures are by leading researchers and can be viewed free or ordered on DVD. See Resources page for more information.

We will next look at a few topics which illuminate how the brain and the mind connect and how we approach their use.

How vast and complex the brain is. How little we know about its functioning—still. How responsive the brain is to the environment. How responsive it is to training, to repetition and to focus. How the brain’s fundamental qualities—neuroplastic, neurogenerative—are affected by exercise. How even a few neurons can display intelligence and adaptation.

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SCIENCE BOX

SCIENCE BOX: COMPONENT PARTS OF THE BRAIN The adult human brain is made up of over 100 billion neurons. There are estimated to be 60 trillion connections between those cells or neurons. This matrix is composed in two sides of the brain, the left and right hemispheres. These are connected by a major bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum. If you view the wrinkled, convoluted surface of the brain from above, it looks like the two halves of a walnut. The right side develops a little faster than the left. Although many of our most important activities use areas from many places in both hemispheres some general activities tend to organize more on one side than the other during development as the two hemispheres compete with each other to form an optimal organization. With all of this complexity and enormous number of neurons, the average brain weighs only about 3 pounds and arises from just a few initial stem cells. How does the brain become this incredible structure from a few primitive cells? In the first few weeks of pregnancy a “neural tube” forms; it’s about 2 mm—very small. From this tiny neural tube, the fetus continues developing and responding to sound and light within the womb—already forming networks and connections for recording perceptions and feelings. How does the brain organize into functions and functional areas? These are difficult and complicated questions that concern developmental neuroscientists. We will touch on only a few ideas they have discovered. The brain has grey matter and white matter. The grey matter looks grey because it contains the cell bodies of the neurons. There is thin strip of grey matter, the neocortex or “bark,” that surrounds the brain. We see this neocortex in all mammals; it is responsible for sensations, perception, cognition and motor functions that we perform all the time. Looking at a cross-section of the brain, we see deeper pockets or areas of the brain that show grey matter. These are called nuclei and serve to relay information from the senses and outside world to the neocortex or to send information from the neocortex to the rest of the body. It’s a two-way highway: sensations from the outer world affect the cortex, our perceptions and reactions; and how we think and process those sensations affect how they are, in turn, filtered and perceived in the first place. The white matter consists of fibers that connect the neurons. Each neuron has an axon extending from it like a tail encased in layers of a white fatty substance known as the myelin sheath. Neurons that have this insulating sheath can pass on electrical impulses quickly and efficiently. There are other nerve fibers that


do not have this covering and they transmit information much more slowly. At the end of each axon is a tree-like structure called a dendrite. This is how neurons connect. By following chemical and electrical signals, we can watch two neurons grow toward each other and connect. There are many other cells that support all these neurons: glial cells and astrocytes among many others. They make up more of the brain than the neurons themselves and function in repair and grouping and shaping neurons as experience alters the environment. Many of their functions are still being discovered. These are the basic building blocks of the brain. If we look at the adult brain, the surface looks very uniform. If we use microscopes and look very closely at each area we can easily find different kinds of cells that vary in their types of inputs and outputs. Broadman in the early 1900s identified 47 different areas of the brain. For example, the information from the eyes travels back to the area near the occiput, the back lower area of the skull. This is the visual cortex. It has several zones. When information comes from the eyes it passes through these areas. A little forward from the occiput, there are two areas that activate when you produce speech and another for understanding speech. Brain Development: What can we learn about the unique matrix of awareness and our personality from how the brain develops? There are 100 billion neurons in the brain. Almost all the neurons that make up the brain are created in the early pregnancy. In order to produce such a huge structure, neurons are created at a rate of 200,000 neurons per minute in early pregnancy. Brain development occurs not only during pregnancy, but also into childhood and adolescence, not completing until the age of 21! One thing that is surprising to many people is that newborn infants in the first year of life have more than twice as many neurons in the brain than an adult. They also have twice as many connections between the neurons. So between he first year and the 21-year-old there must be significant “pruning” and shaping of the neural network. Each person will lose neurons and networks they do not need to conform to whatever environment they are in. The interaction of the environment and the innate growth urge as well as the genes give a tremendous opportunity to the developing human being to be expansive, creative—even genius. This is one reason why the early-childhood environment is so critical; the more varieties of stimulation in the environment, the greater the complexity of the neural networks.


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The brain, the mind, and pain perception A common theme in Yogi Bhajan’s teachings is that pain is something we have a wide range of choice over; and yet pain is inevitable. Each challenge is something we can use to go deeper, to center in our spirit, and to act from a place beyond the elements and polarities of life and our mind. He says that most of our pain we cause ourselves, from our emotional reaction to life, lack of a neutral mind, and from the habits of our subconscious to avoid the present moment and its reality. When we do yoga, there is often some discomfort associated with it, for example, holding our arms above our head for several minutes. When teaching he would say, “The pain

is in your brain. Hold the arm still from your consciousness; for you and your brain will release a natural morphine. You will be fine.” Or he would instruct us to go beyond the reactions and dwell in the infinite with trust and devotion. The brain is filled with mechanisms to overcome pain and to respond to pain with an inner healing force. Exploring how we experience pain, and how meditation and exercise help to alleviate pain and suffering, give us an inroad to understand how subtle and complex the brain–mind relationship is. Before we go too deep into this topic, let’s start with an experiment.

Interactive Group Exercise Pain Perception: An Applied Experiment In this experiment we will observe the affect of meditation and the power of Word on the perception of pain. We will observe three different conditions and the ability of the participants to modulate their experience of pain based on these varied conditions. To Begin: Ask for a group of volunteers (up to 9) and have them divide themselves into three groups. With the volunteers waiting outside the room, set up the experiment: 3 stations with ice cold water. 1. Call in the first group. Without much explanation, have them place their hands in the water and time them. Note the time. 2. Call in the second group. This time prepare them with a brief introduction to the exercise and plant the seed of a time limit. Note how long the participants are able to keep their hands in the water and compare that to the first group as well as the ‘planted’ time—did they exceed the time, not exceed it, or other? 3. Call in the third group. Once their hands are in the ice cold water, have the rest of the group begin chanting Long Sat Nam. Note the time difference. What is the effect of group consciousness on the individual? Did the times increase from the two other experiments? 32

It’s in Your Brain Descartes wrote about pain and showed a pain reflex arc to the brain. In modern times we can track those fibers with magnetic imaging machines. Sensory nerves connect to nerves (a synapse) in the spinal cord, then up to the thalamus in the brain, then on to the cortex where you experience pain. If pain were only perceived via this arc, you could just cut the nerve and the pain would go away, even to the point of cutting the nerve directly at the spin. This has been practiced for years in neurosurgery. There are more than 16 common areas that are cut. But oddly enough—and even counter intuitively—you can produce more pain through this procedure, and sometimes paralysis. So it is usually a last resort, done only if someone is imminently dying. So what does this tell us about pain? The reality is there is no pain pathway; in fact, a spinothalamic cordotomy for patients near death still leaves 50% of patients in pain, others are relieved before death. People have even had a limb removed because of pain. But pain is in the brain. So how do we get to the brain? People ask, Where in the Brain is pain? We don’t know yet. Bertrand Russell, the wellknown British philosopher, went to the dentist. The dentist asked him, ”Where does it hurt?” Russell said, “In my brain.” It is as hard to locate consciousness. You can look at the



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brain and see visual stimulus, but not pain. Pain without emotion is not pain. It is like asking where beauty is. Pain is right next to beauty. Pain equals stimulus plus emotion plus cognition plus experience. Emotional response to pain is cultural. We are taught how to respond emotionally and differently to pain and sensations. Penfield explored brain structure as patient is awake. Brain doesn’t feel pain so you stimulate cortex to see what is provoked. Math, grandmothers, memory, dreams. . . . You can never stimulate pain. It is not in the cortex, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is in the lower nerves. Rather, pain is a composition. Placebo Placebos are very effective for more than a third of patients. Every time a doctor gives you a drug, he or she is giving you a placebo because the placebo effect is inherent. The catch is that the patient must believe you know what you are doing. Acupuncture Some believe it is placebo—a psychological mechanism. It doesn’t really matter where the needles go. Some studies have suggested that needle placement has shown no difference in effect. It doesn’t matter. S. Sebastian painted with arrows and his expression was of bliss. Guru Arjan laid on the hot plate for hours, days at a time. Ronald Reagan was shot but didn’t know it for over a minute. The brain overcomes pain. Hypnosis and Meditation These are the most underutilized approaches. It doesn’t block stimulus from the spine. It works through the brain. In studies, they’ve shown that the stimulus is the same but area of emotion in the brain isn’t stimulated as strongly and the pain is gone. This is central to meditation and the self-hypnotic approach to pain management.

The following statements are from The Mind: “Excellence, awareness, and caliber come to you when you make your mind play the game you and your soul want. When you play the game your mind makes you play, it ruins you and creates your pain. The mind is vast and extends throughout the totality of the universe. It is involved everywhere. So you become a victim in many ways. You are a victim of your subconscious, which is part of your mind.” “Look how your memory works. Suppose you recall a painful or embarrassing incident. The moment the Negative Mind starts to act on that memory it magnifies the events and tries to protect you. That is its basic function—to give protection to your life.” (page 18) “Pain and calamity are challenges that give us strength within us and within our prayers. When you are in pain, your prayers become very strong.” (page 23) “Never forget God has made you a human. Never misunderstand, He could have made you a snake or a donkey. God made you for a purpose. Those who don't live their purpose, live in pain.” (page 23) “You cannot hold to something external. You must find your own depth and test it, confirm it. So, calamity is not a bad thing. Calamity is a right thing. Calamity only tells you that life has a climate, and climate by nature constantly changes. How can you train your mind to handle the calamities?

duKu prhir suKu Gir lY jwie

Dukh parhar sukh ghar lai jaa-eh (Guru Nanak, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, p 2, 5th pauree of Japji Sahib) Pain will fly away, and peace will come home to your heart.

Give that calamity to God who has sent it, and take happiness home. Don't think a tragedy is only a tragedy. It is also to test your courage. In this life you have all come here fully equipped. You can face whatever comes in your life.” (page 24)



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“The mind must serve you. The mind has to be developed to give you supportive strength. There is no reason to be unhappy other than the pain you get from the results of these (page 51) intrigues.” “You react and try to expand any way you can. You may try to blow apart the feeling of limitation by stimulating the mind with drugs or with some type of extreme or extraordinary experience. That approach just causes more problems and pain. Anything that pushes you up and out instantly, and unnaturally, will have a powerful reaction of at least equal force that pulls you down and back in. Your efforts will backfire. You can't become spiritual or wise overnight by some grand effort. You cannot be impatient and greedy and gobble God like It is a cookie. To stop the games and mental intrigues and to truly be happy you must develop a consistent attitude of human life in which you can excel above time and space, using your mind at the frequency of your soul. That is the attitude of a happy person. Every other approach and short-cut will prove (page 53) to be false.” Yogi Bhajan speaks of the need to situate in shuniya and stillness to become vast and dwell there, first: “This is the key to training the mind. Use the mind to project to and stay at a point beyond the mind's own nature. When your mind stays with the self-illumined soul within you, then all pains and suffering disappear and your presence radiates and works. If you try to train your mind by confronting your ego and desires, it only causes pain. Train the mind by directing it to confront your unlimited soul. The mind will be elevated, and you will be elevated. That consistent projection and training is called a permanent state of bliss. Your mind is your projection. Your mind is not your confrontation.” (page 56)

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“Uncommitted relationships are very painful. There is fear, no trust, unconscious anger, and mistake after mistake. To get rid of that pain, you drink. You drink so much you can become an alcoholic. If you don't drink, you find some other drugs. You become a drug addict. You do all kinds of other weird things and damaging habits to avoid the pain. All these negative habits that belittle and subject your life are just tactics to cover over one great pain: your own hollowness. You try to bury the shallowness you feel. You have no depth because you are not committed. Without commitment in your language and actions you feel that you do not know what is going on. You are unsure and lack control. You react by feeling irritation and anger. Then you find lots of ways to let that anger out.” (page 74) “How can you fail your own conscious being? How is this betrayal of your own consciousness possible? It is the same answer: There is a joy in ego because it is now. But the ego is also blind, and that is why there is pain in life. So what other power can we use to put the hole in the mind? What pearl can focus us beyond the immediacy of the ego? The problem is you cannot control your own mind with your ego. It only produces more of the same and more complications.” (page 97)

Music Much relief of pain has been experienced by those who use music as a distracter. The grammar, rhythm, tone, and feeling of the naad can help to generate the relaxation response and release the mind’s grip on pain. Music is all the more powerful when it has inherent meaning-making. That is, if the music is intended to be healing, strengthening, planting the seeds of change or transformation, then the effect on the pain response is even greater. Music sways and moves the emotion of tattvas, which can totally change your experience of the present.



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The Game of the Tattvas

We Are a Process A key concept that we must grasp in order to understand mastery over the mind is that we are a process—not a static thing. We are a whirlpool of form created from the formless by a matrix of energies or tattvas that reflect our actions and our gifts, given by the creator. In a real sense we are constantly created, in each moment. We are different with every breath, breath to breath. Yogi Bhajan puts it this way: “A person can totally evaporate and reform because there is no such thing as time and space. There is matter, the tattvas. The five tattvas join and become something, and then they disintegrate and there is nothing. The tattvas go into tattvas, mind goes into Mind, and soul goes into the Infinite Soul. Then who is alive and who is dead? Dead and alive are finite consciousness. Infinite consciousness is neither dead nor alive.” This means that at any moment we can reconstitute our Self; reclaim our Self and renew our Self. What stands in the way? The games and ego reactions that play out from our subconscious and unconscious; and the effects of actions through time. Both require a gradual, disciplined sculpting of our mind and character to live an excellent life informed by the direction of our consciousness. As we discussed in the previous section, much of our pain in life comes from the reactions, emotions, fears, insecurity and games our minds play. Instead of distilling our tattvas from negative reactions to neutral reality in the here-and-now, we become clever and believe we can outwit our own groundlessness, our own hollowness. When we try those things, we always get a reaction that intensifies the problem. Instead we need to acknowledge our negative reactions and emotions and let them go. Direct them into the infinite. Resolve them as they relax into an experience of our strength, our ground, our basic guna of subtle reality. Yogi Bhajan explains that the tattvas are part of the process of creation as God goes from the unmanifest to the manifest; from formless to form; from God within its own being to God


in action. To a Yogi this is a key realization—that there is no separation at all between you and God, between you and consciousness: “There is an old story about how the body, mind, and soul came to be. That story tells us how they relate with each other. It begins with the Infinite presence of God. When God decided to come into the Creation to have experience a change occurred. That change came in stages like the gradual changes in the colors of the dawn. In each stage there is a little less Oneness and a little more separateness. That process that makes everything seem separated is called maya. Each new stage of separateness has its own qualities. The yogis call each new stage a tattva. There are about 31 stages going from complete Oneness through Prakirti—all of our experiential world— down to pure individual atom separateness. The final five tattvas give rise to the qualities of matter and sensations we are used to. Creation has layers. It is subtle. In the West we pay attention only to the last most dense layer of matter. Guru Nanak and other saints tell us there are worlds upon unseen worlds. The mind senses all those seen and unseen worlds. Each of us must maintain a special balance in the tattvas with our mind in order to have a strong body and a unified personality. The quality of our life, our mind, and our health is maintained by the tattvas. The five densest of the tattvas are experienced as qualities in the body and in all matter. These essences are called ether, air, fire, water, and earth. The Ether gives you the space to exist and the quality of that space or form. Air gives the movement of spaces, thought, and the life force we call prana. Fire powers your digestion and your lifeblood. Water composes most of you and flows with emotions and impressions. Earth gives the final base structure. It is all that is left after the fire of the funeral pyre is done. It is funny. In the realm of maya and earth there is a law of polarity that governs our perceptions and desires. The ash that is left from the funeral pyre is the smallest part of you, and yet it is what you spend most of your time and attachment on.


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Each soul that comes to this earth has come with a particular combination of prana and tattvas to have an experience unique to it. Here is how the story of the soul is often told. When the soul was asked to come into a body, the soul refused. God wanted to separate the soul because of His boredom. He wanted to experience Himself. He created maya and nature (Prakirti) and all that. Guru Nanak explained this very beautifully in Japji. You have to read and recite it to really understand its depth. Guru Nanak explains that there was not a separation as just Prakirti and Purkha—the creation and the soul. That is not how to understand it. Japji explains that it is the Karta Purkh. Normally it is explained as Purkha and Prakirti, God and His Creation, as if they are totally separated. In Japji it is just the reverse. It is God in the creation and God. So, God is in every atom of the creation and also completely within Himself. In simple English, when God out of His boredom wanted to create Prakirti, to see His own Self, the soul did not want to go. The longing and love of the soul for God was so great. They are the same frequency and being. So it was decided they could not be truly separated. It was agreed that the soul would not accept the tattvas, the divisions, and categories that devolved into matter and the creation. Furthermore, the soul could not accept any confinement since it is against its nature. In order for God to have the experience, three things were agreed upon. First there would be a time limit for the experience; that would be regulated by the amount of prana given to the soul through the breath. That is why a human being was called a praanee—one who carries the prana. After a certain amount of prana was used, the tattvas that gave the condition of the mind and the existence would leave, and the soul would be free to go. That was one condition. Second, the soul was given a subtle body to accompany it and give it clarity and distinctness. With the tattvas balanced, it was agreed that all people of higher consciousness would be completely tuned into all subtle life around them. With this link they could be very peaceful, very unique, and excellent people. Excellent people are those who can look into the fineness of everything. They can understand the implications and connections between things. They can sense the intentions and are less emotional, commotional, and neurotic. So there is a way to experience everything with grace.

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The third thing agreed and given to the soul was the mind, given as a vehicle, as a servant. Just like when you marry your daughter and you give her gifts—clothes, money, and a car. In that way the soul was given a kind of vehicle through the power and faculties of the mind. With the mind, the soul can always tune into and experience God. It can always tune back to the Earth, to this moment in time and space. It is also the mind which adjusts the five tattvas into a balanced proportion to match your character and activity.” (The Mind, p. 43-44)

Emotions Associated With Each Tattva The game of the tattvas is the play of the basic qualities that form the temperament of our body and mind. Each of the five basic tattvas or elements gives rise to positive and negative emotions. In the yoga tradition five of the great obstacles to reaching a sattvic, centered mind and to the release of suffering are emotions associated with each tattva: Earth Water Fire Air Ether


Greed, insecurity Lust, desire, fantasy, resentment Anger, jealousy, irritability Attachment, or detachment Pride, Ego


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Interactive Group Exercise Tattva Clearing Ceremony We will create a little ceremony to call on the negative energies of each of our five main tattvas as we personally experience them; and then we will transform them to serve our soul. There are three steps to the transformation. STEP ONE

Small Group Discussion Discuss your transformation. Which emotions and tattvas need balancing in you? Discuss how we transform, redirect and elevate the energy of negative emotions and then act from consciousness. Why do emotions often seem more real than your own Self and consciousness?

Meditating on Each chakra

First we meditate on each chakra for 3 minutes each—from the First to the Fifth. We consciously observe how we become emotional in each element. We identify that manifestation. Name it. Notice how it changes the body and energy when it is present. Then we release that energy by becoming still and vast.

Dancing and Movement approximately 11 minutes Movement and Dance. Shake it all up. Let the tattvas fly as you move every part of your body. Dance!

STEP TWO Write the name of the manifestation

Second, we write the name on a flat wooden stick. We proceed through each chakra in this way. When we have all five identified, released and captured on the wooden sticks, we wrap them together in a bundle with a string. Then we put all the sticks in the center of the group in a sacred vessel. STEP THREE chanting ong

Finally we all meditate and chant the sound ONG. Invoke the power to penetrate from the Fifth Chakra. Turn yourself and the vessel and all the negative reactions of the tattvas into a flame of light. Continue chanting ONG projecting from the sixth center to go beyond these elements. When your personal negative emotions are gathered with everyone else’s, it means that your impersonal reactions from your unconscious realms are transmuted as well. End the chanting by holding the breath and expanding your light to infinity. As you all exhale the vessel is quickly removed from the circle and sent to be burned. We already burned it in our mental flame. We will complete the physical process later.



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Awaken your dormant human consciousness An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

March 8, 1995

Yogi Bhajan speaks about the fundamental human power—consciousness. Commitment, conception, deliverance, intuition are only available through our consciousness, our awareness, our excellence. He says that our consciousness is dormant and until we wake it up, become alive to life, we will constantly fall short of our intention, our word, and ultimately, our destiny.

An edited transcript of this class is included in your Study Guide.

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a

Authentic Relationships • STUDY GUIDE

KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION SELF-HYPNOSIS TO DEVELOP INTUITION Yogi Bhajan • March 8, 1995

POSTURE:

Sit in a comfortable meditative posture.

MUDRA:

Bring your hands up by your sides, palms up toward the ceiling, elbows at your side. Place the thumb and mercury finger together in Buddhi Mudra. EYES:

Close the eyes. Focus on the back of the neck. Look through the back of the neck.

BREATH: MUSIC: TIME:

Long and deep. “Longer the breath; longer the life.”

Singh Kaur’s Guru Guru Wahe Guru, Guru Ram Das Guru

11-22 minutes

Inhale deep. Press your hands into your chest. Press hard. 30 seconds. Exhale. Inhale deep. Press your hands into your navel. Press hard. 30 seconds. Exhale. Inhale deep and fold the hands at the heart (prayer pose) and press the hands together—hard. 30 seconds. Exhale and relax.

TO END:

COMMENTS:

You must understand, if your eyes cannot see in the back of your neck, you are not covered. This is the first step of intuition. If you cannot see the unseen, you cannot know the Unknown, you cannot talk the unutterable, then you are not a human. Get lost. Float with the music. Do it consciously. You’ll learn to ask yourself instead of others. Your Self is the only God you can ask. Be very relaxed.



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Practicing Shuniya, Mindfulness (Metacognition) and Intuition There are three specific practices: metacognition, shuniya, and intuition. In the video class, Yogi Bhajan guided us to a specific place, using specific words. He calls us a dormant donut. You can awaken! You’re not a human unless you have the ability to know the unknown. Until you have this capacity—this ability to lock into YOU, your consciousness, and your creator—you will never master the mind. He guided us into that space—now lock it, catch it, try to stay there. Notice what happens—the moment we attach to a particular feeling, we lose ‘it.’ Locate Yourself Locate yourself and preserve, dwell in that location, because everything is there. He gives very clear instructions about the structure of a practice. What is its importance to us as teachers? Yes, there are certain skills and we have to practice; it takes time, as he said. This is one of the reasons we’ve designed the Transformation Level Two Practitioner curriculum—these five mirrors of the self—to be completed in no less than 2-1/2 years. It takes time. Life and your demons, life and your excellence, will give you plenty of opportunities every day to locate yourself. Why is it that some people can practice meditation for a long time and they never seem to change? It’s possible because of the structure of the mind; all these practices still never seem to take us beyond the mind. What does it mean to lock you, your creator and your consciousness? What would this look like? Accepting the Gift of Uniqueness Often, we think it will create some kind of uniqueness; we’ll be ‘special.’ The problem with that thought is that we’re already unique. If you can understand and allow and trust your uniqueness from infinity to unique you’d be fine; instead you look for a difference, and while you’re busy trying to be different you miss out on being unique. Uniqueness allows you to accept the gift of yourself from the creator; whereas difference means you have to compete from within somebody else’s situation. 40

We’re trying to establish the vocabulary of consciousness. Can we accept the gift of uniqueness and dwell in it? Or do we not trust it? Or are we afraid? Or do we get lonely? “I’ve got it, but now I’m afraid.” Go stand and look in the mirror for 11 minutes. What do you see? First you see an image. Actually, you’ll see some sensory object, a reduced impression of you, some gross imprint in manas, in the mind of senses. Your mind activates and processes all those thoughts. Either you get trapped into the processing—hypnotized—and you never see you; or the beauty—the attachment—and you don’t penetrate to the subtle. Trust the Unknown, the Flow, and the Fantastic Flaw The Unknown exists even if we don’t realize it. It’s not like one can go find it. Stop searching! Yogi Bhajan says recognize. Recognize what exists. How? Wait; wait for the flow. But if you’re too busy thinking, then the flow doesn’t come. Knowing the Unknown is a paradox. How do we find any words if we don’t speak? It’s a relationship in which you stand with the Unknown and wait. Through the process of meditation, the brain changes, the chemistry changes, the hormone levels change. But why does it change? When we let go of the usual constraints that define us, the mind gets very active. The mind immediately says, “Hey, there’s something new! What’s that? Should I feel this vast? Is it okay to feel me? Is it okay to feel me if this isn’t usually me?” Trust your own radiance and beauty. If you look in the mirror and think: “I’m flawed,” then can you transform and elevate that thought? So instead of seeing the flaw, can you see the ‘perfect’ flaw? Did you know that if you get an emerald and it’s not flawed, it’s not real. Did you know that in the African and Native American traditions, beadworkers and artisans intentionally introduce a ‘flaw’ so as not to offend the gods. It is the perfect flaw that gives depth and beauty. Own the Fantastic Flaw and suddenly energy is released.



MIND & MEDITATION

Continually Re-locating in the Self As you progress in your meditation practice, after a while, you get into the ‘zone’. The twilight zone. Sometimes you’re more comfortable in some zones than others. Sometimes you’ll get lost and never really go to that edge of discomfort. Yogi Bhajan paced us through these stages of change and outlined a way to continually come back to the Self. We’re learning a process—if you can locate into that mindfulness— there’s no limit. But in our consciousness, we form constructs; we limit ourselves. This occurs quite naturally, in concert with our own mind. Suddenly you’re in your negative, positive and neutral minds, and you feel trapped. You start acting it out—this play of the mind—and suddenly you’re small. You’re like the ocean contained in a thimble and your Self cries out, “Wait a minute! Aren’t I the ocean?” You remember and recognize your Self. You start expanding; and things begin to happen; you start reaching to the Unknown. As we process the thoughts in the mind—using the positive, negative and neutral minds—there are two primary ways to shift our relationship to the ‘thought.’ We can take the thought or feeling and expand it to the Infinite, or we can zero it out. We’ll explore today the various ways to practice these two techniques.


The Naad of Consciousness “Lock in you, your creator and your consciousness.” “I-the-self, call on my psyche to show me the vastness of the creation.” These two statements are the same; they have a structure of three. The creator represents the Infinite that dwells in your own infinity; you is the observer; consciousness is the thing being perceived—that’s what we lock in. It’s usually the ‘I’; I am this and this and this and I am involved; and within me, within the observer, I can see all of this. And as I let my ‘me’ merge into total shuniya and stillness and become all, become the Unknown, then I have the lock, then I have access to this constant rhythm. That’s the goal. That’s the conscious place. That’s the healing place. That’s the place of transformation. That’s what it really means to go deeply into meditation. The words we’re using to describe this state of mind are mindfulness; awareness; metacognitive, the observer, observing the self. From this state you then progress to the place of zero, stillness, where you don’t react to mind, you simply allow it. You get bigger, much bigger. The last step is intuition; but intuition is the automatic condition of being aware. It’s not attainment; it’s already there, just like the Unknown. In terms of the three minds, it means allowing each thought to complete itself through them, and at each stage of completion, not forgetting ‘you’. But if you spin the thought and all the associations with it and you’re able to quote “process” it by dwelling still within you, then you’ve self-qualified. You don’t chase the thought. You include the thought as it goes through the natural cycle; when a thought completes the cycle in the neutral mind, you can decide in consciousness—buddhi—and start acting from a new place. That’s what it means to process an experience. Again and again Yogi Bhajan says, “But you haven’t qualified yourself. You haven’t processed your thought. You haven’t allowed your subconscious to be processed.” What does it mean to process it? Exactly what we’ve just described. It’s a very simple skill.


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Guided Process: Observation and Shuniya Exercise One

Sit Straight. Come into the state of observation. That’s the first step. Observe things as you go. We’ll create three conditions and spend a few minutes with each one. In each condition, we’ll put ourselves into the place of observing and allowing everything that comes up without getting lost, without dissolving into the twilight zone. What happens if you don’t make it through the twilight zone? What state do you end up in? How would you know you were caught? What are the signs? Jerking awake—sleeping. Alertness is lost. You get lost in the hypnosis. You get involved in fantasy. Your tattvas will determine where you get caught. Slow your breath—less than five breaths per minute. Start noticing all your sensations, your thoughts, and more importantly, notice that you’re dwelling in you. Call on your Self to observe your consciousness. Repeat silently: Self is here and I’m observing. Maintain this state even as the conditions change. Exercise two

Sit straight. Establish your Self. Sit still, slow your breath. Use alignment: Chin in and relaxed posture makes it easer to sense this quality of Self-Location. As you do this, your mind—not you—wants to figure out how it’s going to be the most helpful. What should it present? It will comment to you. That’s fine. No matter what it says, you’re just observing. You let it in. Your mind will say, pay attention, I’m telling you about what you’re doing. You be larger than the stream of thoughts and narrative of the mind. Don’t get caught. Make yourself vast. Allow the voices to grow smaller. Locate yourself with a steady breath. Don’t try to sort out one thing from another; just enter into that metacognitive, mindful state—the observer state. If you have thoughts notice that you can have many thoughts all at once. If you have feelings in your body, notice that you can feel them all. Don’t jump around like a grasshopper, just dwell in you. Allow them all in from all directions at once. Expand. Open all the doors. If

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your mind tries to figure it out, take that as just one more sound in the environment of sounds. These are just sensations of the tattvas and the thoughts. Just accept your mind and locate that sense of you. Inhale deep. Stretch up. Exhale. Could you recognize when you pulled away from the space and when you were able to pull back and recognize you were back? Don’t try to remember that spot; because as soon as you try to remember it, you betray the Unknown. It’s as if it’s not you; it’s not intimate enough. If you try to return to that ‘spot’ the next time you meditate, you’ll be encountering your memory, your subconscious, which is different from encountering you, coming into the immediacy of this moment and being you. There’s a command—Be You. Many times when I watched Yogi Bhajan work with someone, he’d say, “Son, you agree to drop it? Yes. Done.” He was in the authentic, unique moment, now—be it so. He wasn’t suggesting that you remember to drop it, but simply to drop it. Otherwise you just continue in your mental processes; you stay stuck. Exercise three

I’m going to say: Go there! And with that command, just be in that space. After 30 seconds, we’ll begin chanting Har and I’d like you to maintain being in ‘you.’ Hold the space of you as you produce the sound. First establish your Self, become the observer, from you as you, watch your consciousness. Don’t try anything, just observe from you. Be to be. Have no condition. Now stay in the “be to be” condition and simply notice as you chant what its effects are: how your mind goes, you enjoy it, you don’t enjoy it, but maintain that subtle sense that you’re fully present—not concentrated, not over-focused— just present, allowing in everything that is unique in this moment, speaking these things, in this group, as you, by your own choice, of the Unknown becoming known to you. Maintain that sense of ‘you’, observing. Now go silent, establish your Self within you. Now mentally pulse Har. Remain in that place that is the observer that is you. Pulse Har. Your mind will project Har. Tell your mind: “Project Har.” Observe. You’ll hear the sound Har and you’ll notice many other things. Allow everything to be what it is, to change. Some things may be uncomfortable: Negative



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mind, you want to get away. Some things may be very enticing: Positive mind, you want to acquire. Some things may be very clear: Neutral mind, seems real, acknowledge it. Let all those things go on and maintain you. There’s nothing to do; be to be. Let your mind relax, discontinue pulsing Har. Locate yourself. You can sense the impact of chanting, everything going on in the entire room, you can sense you. You observing. In his words. You relaxing, but alert, here. Here within You. Now maintain that space and put your palms together. Make a small chopping movement with the hands, with each Har, but keep your location of You as you create the sound. Become Still, let the sounds go. Relax the hands down. Locate the ‘me’ within the ‘I’. Observe your consciousness. Allow it to be exactly as it is; it’s perfect. Maintain your alertness. Inhale. Stretch up.


Group Discussion Allow: Fight the Battle and Lose the War

Was it easier after you’d done all three? Was one harder than another? When you notice that your mind is all over the place, you have to allow that sensation of your mind not staying and just let it to be with you. Rather than trying to force it into stillness, allow and observe. Notice the mental frames and presuppositions: “you’re acting like a 3-year-old.” Your mind uses these familiar frames to interpret thoughts and project negative thoughts. Just let it in. Keep Inviting. Keep expanding and getting larger; then you’ll find just you. It’s not about fighting the mind. You’re just trying to become you. When we fight the mind, we end up ignoring a lot of it; it’s like letting 12 gorillas in. This reminds me of Yogiji’s story about his relationship to his mind in The Aquarian Teacher: “Here’s what happens when I talk to my mind: my mind says this and I say shut up, I don’t need you.” He gives this whole argument. But he’s locating himself within himself when he’s doing the arguing. If he was in his mind doing the arguing, it wouldn’t work. You’re fighting to win the game. Don’t fight the mind, but locate yourself until you can observe the mind within your Self and smile at it. When you allow thoughts instead of fighting them, transformation occurs automatically. In psychology, we tell a client to take a certain emotion and sit with it, appreciate it and hold it; and if you keep doing that, even though it goes up and down in intensity, pretty soon it changes. This is seemingly a very universal experience. When you take these objects of the mind—feelings, sensations, images, or thoughts—and you stay in relationship to them, centered, they change. The mind doesn’t stick too long.


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Guided Process Part One: Observation, Shuniya, and Healing Pick a partner. Have one of you lie down. The other sits up. This is one of the simple healing techniques that Yogi Bhajan gave us: put your hand above the heart of the other person, about three or four inches. Once you establish your Self and are calm, you simply hold it there. You’ll have all kinds of sensations; a healing circuit will be created. Once you make contact, you’ll immediately have an exchange. He described it this way: “You have to win.” You win not by confronting but by centering your Self and allowing everything that’s there. As soon as you do that, everything changes. You don’t do anything; instead you keep coming into the present without the loss of you. Now the ‘you’ that is the observer will be observing this: you, your partner, and your hand. You’re going to have all kinds of sensations. Keep yourself in that simple metacognitive, mindful space and make your breath slow. Here’s what you don’t do: Your mind will say, “Healing, okay I’m looking for a kidney.” You’ll notice all these presuppositions come up. It’s not only natural but also enjoyable; just notice it. Stay with the sensation—‘you’ staying and dwelling within yourself. Here’s what you do: Establish the space for one minute with your hands down. Get into the place of being. You can go all transcendent and infinite if you like, but all that’s needed is the simple observation from the ‘me’, all that’s going on to the ‘I’ of the consciousness. You might have an impulse to sense the person in front of you, but instead, do what Yogi Bhajan says in this lecture, “I ask my psyche to show me the total infinity of all creation.” So that in the same way that you are in your Self, you let your psyche present to you the full scope of all the sensations around you and you stay present within you. As soon as you establish that, float your hand over the heart of your partner. Let that healing circuit connect. It will happen automatically. Simply stay in that place and be absolutely present. There could be any number of sensations coming from the person or other places you’re not even aware of that might try to pull you toward a finite self. Instead, establish yourself in your Self by allowing it all in, by being so vast in your presence that everything can be included in you, right here, the center of the hub, no matter how many spokes may be added.

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Maintain your presence by letting in everything that goes on and notice how your mind acts and reacts—all the sensations—and yet you dwell very steadily. Notice if anything pulls you out and allow yourself to come back and let it be with you. Notice the momentum of your mind. Inhale deep. Allow your hand to relax and exhale. Let everything go. Inhale stretch up and rotate your wrists and exhale. You who are lying down come back and sit up. Doesn’t take a lot of time, does it? That place within you doesn’t have a time. The presupposition of time is a mental structure. One thing you notice is that you experience things. While you were going through all that, did you notice that place, that ‘you’ within you? What happened to that? What we know of boundaries and Self, goes away. Because there’s no place to go or not go—there’s only a place to grow. As the facilitator, where am I going? I’m with me—just as you are with you. In that consciousness, I can sense whatever is going on—one body. If you can be in that neutral minded relationship, then you can access this universal space.

Guided Process Part Two: Observation, Shuniya, and Infinity First, shake your hands. Take your thumb, pick one, and look at your thumb. Get some impression of your thumb. Now close your eyes and keep your impression of your thumb, locate yourself, observe the thumb. Observe your mind’s observation of your thumb. Actually you don’t see your thumb; you see your mind’s observation of your thumb. Allow that in, be in that place that ‘you’ are and observe the thumb, the impression of your mind: a feeling, a color, a sensation, a dimension. Allow that to be whatever that is. Just locate yourself and notice. First locate you, be in the ‘me’, watch the ‘I’ through the mind, observe your thumb and all the other sensations that come with it. In this case I want you to notice the thumb. Now, take each dimension of the thumb and expand it to infinity. If it’s a color, suppose it’s a blue, make it so intensely blue and vast that it’s blue unto infinity. If it’s tall, stretch that feeling of tall to infinity in all directions. If it’s hot, stretch that feeling of hot, like a billion trillion suns bursting unto infinity all at once. If it’s vibrating, then the vibration becomes a wave of God with the breath through every atom



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in the universe so that every single being and planet and cell is your thumb. Expand every sense you experience to infinity—Now—just do it. Keep yourself located. Feel the sensation of relating to this and what happens—feel it. Expand it to infinity, every direction, all at once. Inhale deep—shake your thumb and bring it back. Exhale. What did you experience? Did you succeed? Where were you? What happened to you and your state? When you become zero—shuniya—when you get there, you experience an odd sensation in which everything is present. What is it like to get infinite? The infinite is ultimately personal. Right here, it’s me—it’s personal; it’s not ‘I’, but it’s ‘me’. You get this sense—not that you travel or go or do anything—that there’s no gap.

This is the beginning of good meditation. To help you interpret, let’s look again at the stages of meditation: pratyahar, dharana, dhyana, samadhi. Pratyahar is often described as containing the senses: see no evil, hear no evil, etc. Instead, we simply allow. Allow everything and expand it so that no one sensation is at the center of our awareness. Dharana is concentration, should you concentrate or not concentrate? This is the wrong question. When you dwell within your Self, the mind begins to concentrate on you— dharana. In dhyana, you begin to dwell within the Self and you start projecting the mind. In samadhi you get into shuniya and become one within you, the creator. This is a sequence across all the teachings of yoga.

SMALL Group Exercise The Structure of Your Thought Come into your small groups. Sit in silent meditation for 7 minutes. During this meditation watch your thoughts.

The Roots of Meditation One technique is the cosmic smile, the jeddi glance, a perspective on the experience itself. Antar, jantar, bantar, mantar, yantar, remember that whole sequence? (see p. 193 in The Mind) From the essence, the initiation of the thought, the seed, the antar, it starts getting a dimension, it has a height, a depth: oak and its hard, pine and it’s soft. Jantar, bantar, there is something that makes it a thing in your mind. It acquires these things. There is a sound and a projection and an angle of movement through the universe. Take any of it’s jantar and expand it to infinity and it bursts apart and you’re only left with antar, with an essence, which is you; nothing but you, you in the beginning, you in the end. You’re left with you in that relationship. Now the movement of it can be different. With this movement—the energy of consciousness Yogi Bhajan called the kundalini diagonal force—suddenly there’s a way through. As long as your subconscious is locked into your thought about that or how you should think about that—you’re just square (and we don’t mean a nerd or a geek). We mean literally a square, you’re boxed in, there’s no diagonal way through.


Immediately after finishing the meditation, draw one of the thoughts that came up during your meditation. Try to draw the Antar (essence), Bantar (supporting structure), and the Yantar (visual form or radiance). Take about 5 minutes. Then share and explain your drawings with your group. In addition to the visual forms of the thought, discuss the Mantar, Jantar, Patantar, and Sotantar qualities of the thought.

Whole Group Sharing Select one of the drawings from the group to share with the entire class.


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The Three Minds: Negative Positive and Neutral Known as the function minds, the three minds are the primary way that the mind processes thoughts and makes decisions. Whether conscious or driven blindly by the subconscious, the three minds work to make decisions. The more you become aware of the process, how the three functional minds work; and the more you can integrate the observer into that process; the more power and authority you can bring to the ‘you’ within the ‘I’.

Interactive Group Exercise Expressing the Three Minds Look at Yogi Bhajan’s drawing on p. 14 of The Mind. Notice the qualities and shapes of the Negative, Positive and Neutral Minds. Meditate for a moment on this drawing and feel within your ‘me’ what each action stirs in you. Take a piece of paper and draw your own version of Negative, Positive and Neutral Minds. Then share your drawings with your small groups.

Interactive Group Exercise working with the Three Minds You know the mind isn’t going to stop anytime soon. In order to enjoy the play of it, we want to process and allow the mind to cycle, without losing the place within our Self. Get into small groups. Step One Divide yourself into thirds, representing the Negative, Positive, and Neutral Minds—like a pie. Before beginning, establish that space/place within you. That stillness. Step two Then, one of you will give a thought—any thought. For example, “I sail a beautiful boat.” That’s a thought. Stay in the meditative space and experience what happens within you as you process the thought from the Negative, Neutral, or Positive Mind.

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Step three Whichever mind you are representing—Negative, Positive, or Neutral mind—you comment from that position. Allow the cycle to process in order: those representing Negative Mind comment first, then Positive, then Neutral. Continue the exercise with other thoughts. The object is to experience the processing of the mind while you meditate in this place. When you’re in this place, it’s usually because you’re in silence, but it can be a place you’re in all the time. With this exercise, we are creating an environment that’s really like your mind. If you really want to meditate, you have to allow the mind to process. The mind itself gets stuck. It may just stick like a record—negative, negative, negative, run, run, run. It may never go to the positive. If you’re just observing and allow the natural change, then it may eventually move to the positive. We’re generating the cycle through the group. First establish yourself within you, become ‘me’ within the ‘I’, go to your place that embodies to “be to be.” If you can, go to a place even beyond shuniya—being nothing, it means you’re so still, you’re so within that self, you can sense the tiniest ripple in the universe. It’s right here; it’s part of your hand; it’s part of your heart; it’s part of your head. You’re simply being zero. You maintain your dwelling even as you do the exercise. It’s strange, isn’t it? And yet, even in life, if you speak you want to have this same presence. If your presence doesn’t work, what does? The sense of what you have to allow in order to be present within all three minds changes, so it’s an interesting process to witness and observe. Repeat the exercise several times.



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Rahao—Pause and Assess Is it more challenging to hold the space? Can you notice within yourself what you have more difficulty allowing in? Each mind will provoke thoughts; thoughts will provoke feelings, emotions, and reactions; which will in turn project the subconscious; which will in turn overlay its own images, memories, patterns and thoughts. All you have to do within all this activity is stay present. You’ll get an experience of the structure of your own mind. This exercise is a good diagnostic: how much do we really know about the Negative, Positive, Neutral Minds. But more importantly, this exercise is about the experience of witnessing. Neutral is sattvic, neutral, pragmatic, factual, is what it is, on the spot. What is the assessment? What is it from the soul? Negative is going to notice whatever you need to avoid, what the problem is. Positive moves toward something, expansion, utilization.

Large Group Discussion What was the most important thing you learned about you in relation to your own mind? There’s a push in the subconscious to get things structured so my ‘I’ can do it—or just let it go, let it process. That’s why we did it slow and we did it quickly. We’re reconditioning our relationship to the mind and its normal activity and process.

Dancing and Movement approximately 11 minutes Dance: Move the body freely. Dance energetically. Shift the consciousness; shake it all out.

Repeat the exercise. There’s nothing outside your mind. This exercise, this course, this world is just a mirror. The choice and the opportunity is to come from ‘you’. What do you need in order to do this? You’re starting to realize what you know or don’t know about Negative, Positive, and Neutral mind. Notice how your mind reacts to whether you think you know or don’t know—that’s part of the mind. But if you remain with you, establishing the ‘me’ within the ‘I’, you can simply observe and allow the thought to process through the three minds. In the boundless space this is you—everyone in the room is you. Experience you within the vastness of the creator creating you as you, in this moment of absolute stillness, in this beautiful, loving reality. Just establish the ‘me’ within your ‘I’, the stillness within your movement, allowing everything to be as it is. Sat Nam—I love all that is. Sat Nam—I allow all that is. Wahe Guru—what bliss, what beauty. Wahe Guru—beyond expression I dwell in the unknown. Wahe Guru. Inhale deep, stretch up and shake your hands.



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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION BALANCE THE MIND 2 Yogi Bhajan • February 12, 1992

1. Lie down on your back. Bring your arms and legs up to 90 degrees. Toes point toward the ceiling. Spread the fingers wide, palms facing the thighs. After 3 minutes begin singing loudly, from the navel, to the Aquarian March by Nirinjan Kaur. Continue for 7 minutes. Let the energy come in and take care of the lower back. If you knees bend it means you worry too much. This posture is between headstand and shoulder stand and gives you a new brain, new pelvis, and takes care of the liver. 2. Immediately bring your knees to your chest and wrap your arms around the knees. Press very firmly. Bring your nose up to your knees. Do not let your feet cross. Continue chanting powerfully with the Aquarian March. 5-1/2 minutes. Pressing the knees to the chest will open the 2nd and 3rd lumbar vertebrae.

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3. Shiva Dance. Stand up immediately and dance with hands above the head and shoulders. Fingers towards the ceiling. Allow only one foot to be on the ground at a time. Rhythms of Gatka is played. 15 minutes. You must have 8 movements, 8 curls in your body per beat; it is called Ashtang Natiem; it is a Temple Dance. You must not lower the hands; if you do so it neutralizes the energy—reversing the effect. Heal yourself.

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4. Immediately come sitting on your heels. a. Dance with the arms. 1-1/2 minutes. This will heal the stomach and it will hurt because you’ve been eating junk. b. Continue dancing with the hands over your head and move the rib cage. 1 minute. This will get rid of disease. c. Now begin moving freely, dance vigorously and fast with the beat. Move the whole body. 1 minute. This will give you perfect healing and energize the body. d. Now begin clapping the hands. Do it hard and pressure the fingers. 1 minute. This will help to get rid of arthritis. e. Beat the chest very fast and hard with your fists. 1 minute. To End: Inhale deep and hold. Exhale. Repeat twice more—letting the breath grow deeper with each consecutive breath. Twist the body slowly to the left and then to the right. Relax for a few minutes before moving to the next posture.

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5. Easy Pose. Sit solid and contained. Bring the hands to Prayer Pose at the heart center—apply equal pressure in both hands. Keep this pressure in the hands. Eyes at the tip of the nose. Sing with Se Saraswati by Nirinjan Kaur. 8 minutes. To end: Inhale deep. Hold for 15 seconds. Exhale cannon breath. Repeat twice more. This will crown the entire kriya. You are getting the entire universe in you— all powers—nine special powers, eighteen occult powers, total knowledge, total power, total prosperity, all the three universes, freedom from death, power to uplift and serve, victory over cause and effect, infinite to the infinity of God, all transparent and nontransparent powers shall serve thee.

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Meditations for the Three Minds Now we are going to move seamlessly through the meditations for the three minds. Read through the three meditations found on pages 152, 153, 154 of The Mind, so that you are familiar with them and then listen attentively. Notice the mind, the thoughts, the effects of each meditation. We’ll do each one for 11 minutes to complete the day.

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CHAPTER THREE

Dynamics of the mind: Chambers, Aspects, & Thoughts



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What are the fundamental dynamics of the mind? We’ve explored the Functional Minds and the natural flow of processing a thought through the Negative, Positive, and Neutral minds; and also witnessed how the mind sometimes gets ‘stuck’ in one position never moving forward in the process toward neutrality. We’ve discussed the habits of the mind and the matrix of our personalities that contribute to these repeating patterns. We continue this exploration of the dynamics of the mind by looking at the three Impersonal Minds and how they contribute and align to our gunas. We also observe their interplay with the Functional Minds and the tattvas to generate, in turn, the 9 Aspects, 27 Projections, and 81 Facets. Here are some of the questions we’ll address:

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How do the Functional and Impersonal Minds relate? How do Aspects, Projections and Facets relate? What part do the gunas and the tattvas play? How do I transform this ‘knowledge’ into ‘wisdom’ so that I can apply it to my personal experience? As a teacher you need to be fluent in how to talk about these parts of the mind. If this Aspect of my mind is active how do I relate to it? How do I maintain the Self or not? How do I follow a thought, initiate a thought, or divert a thought?



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The Impersonal Minds

First let’s do a short review of the terms and concepts we first explored in Teacher Training Level One: Foundations. Open up the chart from the back of The Mind as we go through these terms. Look for, identify, and become familiar with the interplay of these various levels of consciousness. Knowledge is the first step toward mastery; therefore, understanding the various functions of the mind and how they interrelate and express themselves in our daily lives via the Projections and Facets is essential in our quest for Mann Jeetai Jag Jeet. At the top of the chart you find Chitta—the Universal Mind, also known as the waves of the mind. In Patanjali’s second sutra he defines yoga as stilling these fluctuations of the mind—the chittas—and goes on to identify the ‘seer’ or observer. Here are Patanjali’s first three sutras: 1.1: “With prayer for divine blessings, now begins an exposition of the sacred art of yoga.” 1.2 Yoga chitta vritti nirodha. “Yoga is the individual discipline that leads to the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.” 1.3: “When this happens then the Seer is revealed, resting in its own essential nature, and one realizes the True Self.” So from the earliest writings available on the practice of yoga, the essence and intent of yoga was codified: find the Self. In another module of the Transformation Level Two Teacher Training—Lifecyles and Lifestyles—we will look at these fundamental questions of Who am I? and Why am I here? Until then, Patanjali, Yogi Bhajan, and many other masters have already given us the answer—find the Self and the key to the mysteries of the Soul will be unlocked. Turning again to the chart, we see that Chitta manifests in the world through the gunas: tamas, rajas, and sattva. These three gunas correspond directly to the Impersonal and Functional Minds in the following way:


Tamas—Manas and Negative Mind; Rajas—Ahangkar and Positive Mind; Sattva—Buddhi and Neutral Mind. We’ve already delved into the Functional Minds and how they work within their own dynamic. Let’s turn to the Impersonal Minds and review their major traits and functions. In describing Buddhi, Ahangkar and Manas, Yogi Bhajan gives three statements: Manas is “heavenly activity of the coexistence of totality within the finite”—clears that up right? Ahangkar: “heavenly activity of the coexistence of Totality within a vacuum.” Buddhi is “heavenly phenomenon in activity of totality as totality.” What does this mean? “Heavenly activity of the coexistence of totality within the finite.” Manas is going to give you all the earthly senses, sensory impressions from the five chakras associated with them: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. All these sensory impressions compose to give you a feeling and experience of the world—so Manas is the sensory and sensitive aspect of the infinite and finite mind. Everything is “heavenly activity” from his perspective. Everything is coming from this stillpoint within you; so “heavenly activity” is the activity, co-existence or synchronization of that totality active in the finite world. What are you going to be when you grow up? You need direction, intention—some link through Manas. The problem is that you can’t have only Manas, because then you’ll have attachment through the projected senses, which you forget that you project. There are so many ways of perceiving things based on our impressions, emotions, and actions. Ahangkar: “Heavenly activity of the coexistence of totality within a vacuum.” To think of it simply, Ahangkar is something that coheres. From nothing something is there. It’s your attaching function; the limbic system, your emotions, to know when something is important; the ability to form a shape, a gestalt, your ability to identify a form from something. Ahangkar isn’t negative just because it’s associated with attachment. Don’t you want to love? Don’t you want an KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING MANUAL LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION •

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electron to hook up with a nucleus? The problem is when you get lost in the attachment. You can’t see, feel, or understand what’s happening in the larger picture and when you can’t see the larger picture, through intuition, you can’t predict. Yogiji has often said that we must know—we must use our intuition and our subtle body to know—for if we don’t, we’ll be destroyed by those same people who came to us for the answers. Buddhi: “Heavenly phenomenon in activity of totality as totality.” Why is it a phenomenon instead of a “heavenly activity”? From the buddhi, from the reality of the infinite self, things just are—it’s a phenomenon, not an action. These are very high functions of the mind that come directly from the sattvic guna. Buddhi is the background; if you associated with the functions of the brain, it’s certainly connected to the frontal cortex and the associative qualities. You have to have conscious intelligence and intuition. It’s the quality of the mind that is able to identify as totality and not anything else. It’s the frontal cortex, but also the hypothalamus, pituitary and pineal function. Most neurologists would not throw in the pineal. We as yogis do; it’s the radiant body which connects you more to the subtle existence.

Small Group Discussion

For further clarification, here are a few, more formal definitions: IMPERSONAL MINDS The three major functions of the Universal Mind that create qualities of experience, cognition, and judgment. They are Buddhi, Ahangkar, and Manas. They are impersonal because they exist independent of or before the individual sense of self. Manas—The lower or sensory mind. It is one of the three impersonal functions of the Universal Mind. It deals with sensory impressions, sequences, and the desire and impulses generated from their combinations. It is the closest to what traditional western psychology deals with as the mind. Ahangkar—The transcendental ego, the fundamental principle active in nature and mind that creates boundaries, identity, and attachment to things. It creates the sense of “me and Mine” which is considered a fundamental tendency in the evolution of complexity and differentiation of objects and thoughts in the universe. Buddhi—This is the first, most etheric manifestation of the Universal Mind from which all other areas of mind are derived. Its quality or function is to give the clarity, discernment, and wisdom that recognize the real from the imaginary. It forms the deepest core of the human psyche but is impersonal, existing independent of the individual sense of self.

Take this opportunity to review and discuss the Impersonal Minds and their relationship to the gunas—their qualities and manifestations—so that you have a clear handle on their qualities as we go into the exercises around the Aspects. What is Chitta? Describe the function and qualities of: Buddhi Ahangkar Manas Why does the mind project a cloak around a thought?

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the dynamics of the mind

In the make up of our personality, we have nature and nurture. We have these fundamental genes and old patterns that come from who knows where. In a similar way you have components of the dynamic of experience. Some are personal, some are more structural. In psychology we sometimes call them archetypal. In this discussion we refer to them as the Aspects. Even when you express a certain Aspect, it’s not what we would call personal. Having a body isn’t personal; your own body is personal, but actually having a body just means you’re a part of the species. Aspects are generated from the interaction of the Impersonal Minds—Manas, Ahangkar and Buddhi—and the Functional Minds, which make up the next layer of consciousness. Even though everyone has these universal functions— Negative, Positive, and Neutral—they vary tremendously in their expression from person-to-person as we witnessed in the exercises from Chapter Two. They are plastic; your actions can affect them a lot. They feedback upon one another and change each other. They’re not isolated. There’s a level of change and adaptation that personalizes your experience coming from the functional minds.

sometimes it’s not. When you get to quantum mechanics, everything is and isn’t at the same time. There’s a dynamic between these two resources of our being. In that place of shuniya, dwelling in your Self, you command the mind. This is a philosophical problem: How do you do that? The simple answer is you ‘just do it’. The capacity is already built in. If you keep thinking there’s something in-between, you fall into an infinite regress, you get stuck, depressed even. Or instead of ‘just do it’, you could say you have intention, but when you’re in shuniya, there’s no difference between intention and action. You’re God. You say, ‘So,’ the ‘be’ is there, the ‘it’ is there. ‘So be it’ and it is so. You know the idea of the Big Bang. What did God have to do to do that? Bang. There was no 1-2-3-bang. There was no time. Time did not yet exist—to whatever extent it exists or doesn’t now. But when the time dimension is added, then you have preparation; that’s Prakirti. The being (Purusha) has no time dimension. There’s no gap. The relationship you form with that being and ways that you operate in being; and the relationship you form with the mind and the ways you operate with the mind; these are two very different things.

The Flow of Existence Yogi Bhajan has laid out how these various levels of mind interact and start developing the flow of thought. We can look at this two ways: from the top down or the bottom up. Turning to the figure on page 122 of The Mind: from the top down if you begin as Purusha and start to meditate and really relax within yourself and within stillness, we find that at the base you are God. When you are in shuniya and your conflicts and fears fall away, all that is left is God. It’s a label we put on all that exists and all that doesn’t exist—totality. There’s totality in experience—Prakirti—the lower part of the chart; and totality in being—Purusha—before it’s divided up into little parts. We embody both of these in every part of our being down to the atom—it is and it isn’t; we are and we aren’t. Most of the time, we’re trained in classical physics—everything is or

Stirring the Gunas In our being we radiate, we intend, and that radiation stirs the gunas, the energy: tamas, rajas, and sattva. Being, as it starts coming into existence, begins to have qualities: Manas, Ahangkar, Buddhi, which then combine with the Functional Minds to form the dynamic that is the gift of the mind. From that wholeness—chitta—there starts to be a distillation. That’s what the chart in the back of The Mind goes through. These qualities exist everywhere; they’re always together; so it’s about proportion. If my soul’s destiny is to act, to manifest something, to feel something, my mind starts to formulate a thought. And thought is important because it’s energy. It gives perception, emotion, it leads into action. A thought gets crafted by these three gunas. You can craft that thought with its own essence, it’s essence of projection, but it’s going to have to have some



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structure in order to operate within the normal world of polarities. You want a soft squishy thought or a prickly cactus thought or a stainless steel sword thought? These are qualities. Literally the thought itself, as a composition, is going to have these qualities and you can sense it. In a purely bottom-up way we perceive it through our senses. Through our feelings, smell, taste, touch, sight. When you listen to music, you instantly know when one note is off—you sense it. When they study the brain to determine how long it takes you to determine if you like something—it’s the minimum time for the conscious perception of a sensation, that is, you didn’t think about it. This sense of immediate, embodied, dynamic engagement of everything is where we live. Training the Mind The problem is we have a fantastic mechanism—the mind— which needs to be trained. There’s a process. Being able to shape and to initiate a thought, a mental projection, that supports our intention, our action, our destiny cannot be automatic. Once the behavior or the mind becomes automatic, we lose adaptability; we become purely instinctual, without any variance. We are given an innate flexibility. The plus and minus of this flexibility is that we can make mistakes; we get entangled; we pay too much attention to one thing and not another; we want to play the guitar but never practice and so we’re ever the amateur. There are requirements in order to manifest certain thoughts. There is an entire dynamic. All these minds are constantly interchanging their aspects, their facts, creating a kind of background foment. Now if we’re in relationship to them, if we in our capacity to identify are not lost, then we can direct, correct, understand—no problem. That’s where meditation comes in. But we also have to understand that these are functions; we don’t want to cut any one of them off, instead we have to deal with these aspects and balance them in relation to each other and in relation to our intentions. When we look at the fold-out chart from The Mind, we often over-identify with a particular Aspect. We lock ourselves into a particular space and time. We say, What am I? Aren’t I Aspect 2? The truth is you are Infinite God, but your mind is acting out a dynamic at this time because of your tendencies, environments, and habits which looks like this or that,

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Aspect 2 or 9. Are these Aspects (archetypes) set in stone, or would my dominance of some of these Aspects and Facets change based on environment? If I were German would I be substantially different? Yes and No. It’s an interaction, just like genes and environment. Your subconscious plays a role, holds beliefs and experiences that start to bias your temperament. The deliverance of a final action are through the Facets— habits of action and predispositions—that comes through everything you do. The Aspects are Dynamic, Not Static All these categories, these levels of mind are in dynamic; it’s not just slots or boxes that you fit in forever and always. And depending on how you meditate, and where you focus, you can create a training program, a synchronization. You can begin to affect how all these parts work together. These automatic thoughts that you establish partly by your nature and partly by your habit and training can, depending on the context, be fabulous or disastrous. If my guitar hand suddenly starts ‘playing guitar’ while I’m cooking, it could be disastrous or mundane depending on what it’s holding. If these automatic habits cannot act correctly within new or different environments and contexts then you have a problem. If a certain Aspect is too strong, it pushes its pattern or its agenda even in situations or contexts that don’t apply. When you read through the various Aspects, you’ll find some things that are too strong, some things that are balanced and some things that are weak. So the intention is to notice the imbalances and work with the mind so that it can come to balance in relationship to your intention and the environments and contexts you find yourself in. To accomplish your goals, your relationship to the dynamics of the mind must be flexible and on-going—a work-in-progress. Are these the only Aspects of the mind? Yogi Bhajan’s Teachings say no. This is the dynamic that come from the two levels of our being; you could form thousands of different sub-personalities based on this inherent structure of the mind. These aren’t lists of personalities, although you can associate some personalities with them. But if you take these Aspects and link them to your subconscious, you can generate infinite numbers of personalities. Aren’t there places in your life where you don’t even recognize yourself? Mask One, Mask Two. In terms of personality, that’s normal. That’s the



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flexibility of the mind. He said that normally you have 16 functioning at any one time, if you had the normal scope of personalities. So within all these personalities, the question Who am I? becomes silly. We know who you are, you are Infinite God. But this Infinite God is formless and in the form—it’s hard to pin down. In the Earthly realm, you are the Self, the miniature God. The Self has continuity through consciousness, through developed and refined sattvic consciousness. Even in the realm of all these dynamics, he would call it the one consistent thing across all the different personalities and sub-personalities and projections; there is a sense of relatedness to your Totality. That sense of relatedness is when you start observing your meditation, the observer who is right here in the consciousness. Then through shuniya it becomes vast. It bcomes the dwelling in the God—it’s a little doorway. So we do have a sense of self; we have many personalities; and we have a dynamic that underlies, constructs and interacts with all of it, which are the Aspects.

Small Group Discussion Rank yourself within the Functional Minds: Am I Negative Mind first? Neutral second? Or other combinations? We will use this ranking later in our further exploration of the Aspects. Discuss the following questions in terms of how you ranked your Functional Minds: How would each of these rankings affect my approach to experience, solving problems, leaving or entering a relationship, eliminating habits? How would it affect my approach to meditation? How would I as a teacher try to convey to my students what the neutral mind is? How would I speak? How is that different from being detached?

Identifying Your Aspects An Exercise

The interaction of the Functional Minds and the Impersonal Minds generates the nine Aspects. Each one is a stance, an archetypal persona in the world. If you are leading with your Negative Mind and you have certain strengths from the Impersonal Minds, then you project a particular Aspect. The mind, like life, tends toward balance. So, as you look at the ranking you gave to your own Functional Minds, read the three Aspects that fall under that mind (refer to the foldout chart from The Mind). For example, my number one ranking was Negative Mind, so I would study the Defender, the Manager, and the Preserver, and use my intuition and my intellect to determine which aspect most resonated with my own perception of myself. Be sure to note which Impersonal Mind is associated with that Aspect. In my example, I chose Defender, which is associated with Manas. Now, take a look at your weakest Functional Mind. For most of us it will be the Neutral Mind. Again, study the three Aspects associated with this mind: Strategist, Leader, and Teacher. Identify which one resonates with you. Now because the mind tends toward balance, most likely, your aspect from this mind will not be associated with Manas, but rather one of the remaining qualities: Ahangkar or Buddhi. Now that you’ve found your Aspects for your strongest and weakest projection, turn your attention to the third Functional Mind. In the case of our example, it is the Positive Mind. And again, because the mind tends toward balance, this aspect should be easier to identify because there is only one Impersonal Mind remaining of the three. Using this process, you can identify your strongest Aspect, which you may need to balance; your weakest Aspect, which you may need to strengthen; and your third Aspect, which you can explore and discover how it serves you and your projection.

Can one have a Neutral Mind and say something tough? Think of Yogi Bhajan’s example. What does it actually mean to come from the Neutral mind?



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Here’s a quick outline to review the process based on the example provided:

Small Group Discussion Compare your pattern with others in your group.

A. Rank Your Functional Minds, here is the ranking from our example: 1. Negative Mind 2.Positive Mind 3.Neutral Mind

Discuss how this pattern drives or limits your life. How would you recognize this in others?

B. Strongest Functional Mind—Negative Mind 1. Review the three Aspects 2.Choose the one you resonate with most— in this case, Defender 3.Note the Impersonal Mind identified with Defender— Manas C. Weakest Functional Mind—Neutral Mind 1. Review the three Aspects 2.Choose from the remaining two Impersonal Minds— Ahangkar and Buddhi—let’s say, Teacher 3.Note the Impersonal Mind identified with Teacher— Buddhi D. Remaining Functional Mind—Positive Mind; Identify the remaining Impersonal Mind In this case, Ahangkar—Producer

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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION SYNCHRONIZE THE BRAIN AND THE TATTVAS Yogi Bhajan • From The Inner Workout

1. Sit in Virasan and place the palms together at the sternum. Extend the left arm out to the side, 60 degrees above parallel, palm facing down, and move the left hand up and down at the wrist as fast as possible (1a), keeping the elbow locked. Coordinate the movement with Breath of Fire for 3 minutes. Change arms and continue for 3 minutes. 1b) Finally, extend both arms and resume the motion with both arms for 2 minutes. Close your eyes and visualize yourself flying high in the sky. Take yourself through the five elements and totally identify with each. First imagine you are ether, then air, then fire, then water, then earth, then ether again. Feel the difference between each, especially when you return to the ether. Spend about 15 seconds on each tattva. This exercise helps differentiate the left from the right hemispheres of brain. Normally Breath of Fire creates a neutral state. Here, however, movement of the hands creates that differentiation and synchronizes hemispheres as well. Additionally, this exercise is said to balance tattvas. For optimum results, practice it every day.

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2. Sit in Easy Pose. Make fists of the hands with the thumbs tucked inside, and place them palm down in front of the chest at the level of the heart. Now, without moving the wrists, rotate the fists rapidly around each other in coordination with Breath of Fire for 1 minute. Comments: As explained in Yogic philosophy, all living matter is comprised of five elements: earth air, fire, water and ether. These are known as the five tattvas. Practice of this short kriya will bring the tattvas into a state of balance and will synchronize the hemispheres of the brain. This is a very powerful set of exercises to practice every day. 3


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being human is being intuitive An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

November 21, 1990

In this lecture Yogi Bhajan challenges us with the question: Can we be happy? The answer: only if we have intuition. Most of us are good at some things and terrible at others, so we have to be human first—not an engineer, or a mother, or whatever. As an answer to this fundamental unhappiness in the human experience, Kundalini Yoga was developed. Yogi Bhajan exhorts us to become sensitive. “Become Intuitive. You must know.” It is the only way to a happy life.


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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION MAKE YOUR MIND SENSITIVE Yogi Bhajan • November 21, 1990

1. Sit with a straight spine. Eyes are at the tip of nose. Make a fist of the right hand, extend the index finger straight up with the thumb over middle finger. Place your hand in front of right shoulder with the closed palm facing the left. Keep the extended finger straight and stiff. The left hand is in Gyan Mudra. Breathe long and deep. 7 minutes. To end: Slowly begin to raise your right hand over your head, maintaining the mudra, and inhale very deeply. Stretch and suspend the breath. Exhale. Repeat twice more. Relax. Comment: Within 3 to 5 minutes you should feel the energy flowing through you. Rishi Daman experimented his whole life, 120 years, to find this simple truth which you are practicing right now. His realization was that if man can enforce the tip of his Jupiter finger into steel stiffness, he can grab from the universe the Jupiter energy; and If by the optical nerve, he can totally shut off the mind to misbehave, it will create a basic pattern of intuition. If you change the eyes for a second, you must start again from the beginning.

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Break: Talk to your neighbor. You must talk—about anything—but don’t meditate, don’t relax, talk. 5 minutes. 2. Sit with a straight spine. Spread the fingers of the left hand as far apart as possible. There should be an equal distance between each finger. Place the palm flat against the center of the chest. Extend the right arm up at a 60 degree angle and to the right about 30-45 degrees with the palm facing down and fingers spread wide; the elbow is locked and straight. Eyes are on the tip of nose. Breathe long and deep. 7 minutes. To end: Maintain the posture and inhale deep. Hold and stretch that arm out. Exhale. Repeat twice more and relax.

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Comment: Forget about yourself. My right hand is at 60 degrees; armpit must not be straight, must not be higher than 60 degrees. The nervous center of the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and action system is in the armpit, remember that! Armpit is the most important part of the body, and you neglect it the most. You think it is just a joint. It is not. The entire nervous system is based in the armpit. . . . Now you are getting all the five energies at the same time. The thumb represents the id, the ego, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun and Mercury. Five main planets, underneath is the Mars planet, and the Venus is under the id. . . . So please understand, you are almost in control of your total energy. This exercise adjusts the ribs automatically. Break: Talk to your neighbor. You must talk—about anything—but don’t meditate, don’t relax, talk. 5 minutes.



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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION MAKE YOUR MIND SENSITIVE

3. Sodarshan Kriya: Bring the hands into fists in front of the chest, at shoulder level—about 6-9 inches apart. The fists are facing each other. Extend the two Jupiter fingers straight up. Begin rotating the Jupiter fingers in circles toward each other. (The left finger moves clockwise and the right finger moves counterclockwise.) Move only the fingers, not the hands. Breath: A quick Breath of Fire. 7 minutes. To end: Inhale deep, stretch the hands very tight, over the head, and hold. Exhale with a cannon fire breath. Repeat twice more and relax. Comment: We are hitting at the chemistry of our blood formation. It's so important. What you are doing is much healthier than taking two tons of vitamins. It is not guaranteed, but it will avoid cancer in your body. It is a help to that precaution. You can make your body disease free by doing it for 7 minutes. I did it myself to heal myself. It is called Sodarshan Kriya. It is very important. You will see Lord Vishnu raising one finger and moving it. He moves so fast that the whole wheel moves with it. It is symbolic, but we can learn from that. We are not going to become Lord Vishnu. Neither do we want to raise the whole wheel. All we want is to change the entire Sun and Sun means blood. Break: Talk to your neighbor. You must talk—about anything—but don’t meditate, don’t relax, talk. 5 minutes.

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interactive group exercise show and tell: exploring the aspects

Small group exercise

Group Discussion

Get into your small groups or divide yourselves into triads. Step One

Each group or triad will explore one Aspect. Ask yourselves the question: If someone keeps locking into this one particular Aspect and isn’t flexible and incorporating some of the others, how would that manifest? How would you notice that behavior or projection? What would it look like if it were balanced? Discuss.

What is your strongest Aspect? Your most frequently used Aspect? Your weakest? Share an example in your life of how the positive mind might link inappropriately with the negative mind through the subconscious. What were the consequences of that? Look at the diagram Yogi Bhajan drew on page 126 of The Mind, why do the lines of the neutral mind always come back to center? What is that experience like?

Step two

Then look at the meditation that accompanies the Aspect— really study it. Are there are any secrets to teaching the meditation well? What is the sound current used? What quality should it project? Is there anything you would call attention to in the meditation to allow the practitioner to really go deeper into the meditation? Read over the descriptions, study them, formulate your own understanding and concept of your assigned Aspect. Step three

Now create a skit that reflects that particular Aspect. Use your imagination. Help the rest of the groups encounter that particular Aspect. Assign someone from your group or triad to summarize the aspect. Show and Tell. Step four

Finally, practice dealing with a particular problem from your Aspect’s Projections and tendencies. The facilitator will give you a question and you will respond as a group from your particular Aspect.



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The Projections and Multiple Facets

Projections develop the attitude and skills related to their particular Aspect. They are generated from the combination of the Functional and Impersonal Minds as they relate to a thought and a particular Aspect. If your Projections are balanced within any given Aspect, the expression of that Aspect will be perfect. Typically, though, one Projection is stronger than another; there tends to be an imbalance based on our fundamental gunas. Review pages 120-132 of The Mind.

Small Group Discussion How the Projections and Facets Work

How does each thought record itself in akasha? A thought travels through your mind like a faceted gem and has an impact. What is the function of the subconscious in this? How do the Facets work to cloak our thoughts?

Facets are generated from the dominant interaction of one of the three Functional Minds. So if in any given projection, you tend toward the Positive, Negative or Neutral Mind, then any given thought will generally enter through that particular Facet. See the figure on p. 126 of The Mind. In this way, our own tendencies color every thought that crosses our consciousness, and unless we can see and mitigate the natural tendencies of our mind—our perspective—we constantly see things through a distorted lens, that is, the Facets. Review pages 132-

How can we breakthrough our patterns?

135 of The Mind.

Learning to regulate the flow of thoughts by either balancing your Aspects through the Projections; or recognizing the pattern once it has reached the “emotion/feeling” stage and not identifying with it, recognizing it for what it is—a pattern, a habit of seeing—you have the opportunity to break the cycle and recognize truth.

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Interactive Group Exercise Following the Cycle of a Thought

Kundalini Yoga Kriya Next we will practice the Kriya called The Brain Doctor. After that will be some time for Group Discussion and Q & A.

Step One

Pick a single thought to follow. Then become shuniya. Allow that thought to come. Notice all the other thoughts and feelings that arise. Note what supports or reacts to the thought. When you focus on the thought what happens? If you neutralize the energy around the thought by neutralizing your Self into a deep centered place, what happens? What happens to your intuition? Explore this for 10 minutes. Step two

Now pick a single thought you want to initiate and project. Make it a thought that is an intention of your consciousness or soul that means something to you in living your life from this day forward. It must be real, direct, from the heart and simple. Accept, dwell in that thought and project it through the Infinite and trust that it will be returned completed. Observe and feel what happens. How does it arise in its most subtle form and how does it travel through the structures of the universal mind to manifest? 10 minutes. Step three

Discuss your experience of the thoughts. How does your experience relate to the structures and dynamics of the mind we looked at earlier? How can you successfully redirect a thought? Initiate a new one? Have an original one? What would give you the greatest increase in your ability to direct the thoughts of your mind?



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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION THE BRAIN DOCTOR Yogi Bhajan • From Inner Workout

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1. Sit in Lotus Pose. Place the hands by the hips and bounce up and down using the hands to push the body up off the floor. Move rapidly in coordination with Breath of Fire for 2 minutes. To the Yogi, one’s own age is measured by flexibility. When a man cannot sit in Lotus Pose he is equivalent to 40 years of age and when a woman cannot sit in Lotus Pose, she is equivalent to 120 years of age.

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2. Lie on the stomach with the forehead on the floor. Interlock the hands at the small of the back. Inhale and raise the head and upper torso as high as possible then exhale down to the original position. Repeat the cycle 52 times. This exercise helps adjust the ribcage. 3. As in Exercise 2, inhale and raise the head and upper torso as high as possible, and at the same time strike the buttocks with both heels. Exhale and relax down. Repeat this cycle 52 times, then relax with the arms by the sides. This exercise strengthens the lower back and helps eliminate lower back pain.

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4. Lie on the back with the fingers interlaced at the navel point. Jump the legs up and back toward the head, lifting the buttocks off the ground. Repeat this jumping motion 52 times. This exercise is great for releasing pent-up tension and frustration!

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5a

5b

5. Squat into Crow Pose. Extend the arms straight in front parallel to the ground with the palms together (5a). Inhale, stand up and clap the hands over the head (5b); exhale, squat down and clap the hands straight in front. Repeat the complete cycle 52 times. 6. This is a four-part exercise. Each part is done for four counts. a. Begin by sitting in Easy Pose with the arms extended to the sides, parallel to the ground, palms facing down. Keep the arms perfectly straight and tight like iron throughout the following sequence. b. First pump the arms 3 times as though you were flying. On the fourth count, firmly slap the ground with the hands. c. Second, pump the arms 3 times and on the fourth count clap the hands above the head. d. Third, pump the arms 3 times. On the fourth count extend the arms in front parallel to the ground and clap the hands. e. Finally, pump the arms 3 times and on the fourth count clap the hands behind the head.

6a, 7a

6b, 7b

6c, 7c

When the sequence becomes familiar, substitute the mantra Har Har Har Hari for the counting. Chant in rhythm with the movement for 2 minutes. This series of exercises focuses on the brain. Using the mantra Har Har Har Hari causes the projective brain to assist the initial brain. Keeping the arms straight and tight stimulates reflexology points along the arms and “is better than the best acupuncture.”

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7. Repeat the entire series of postures in exercise 6 using the Guru Gaitri Mantra: Gobinday, mukanday, udaaray, apaaray, hareeung, kareeung, nirnaamay, akaamay. The sequence is the same but the pumping motion is faster. Pump the arms up and down once with each word of the mantra. Clap the hands on Apaare and Akaame. Continue for 3 minutes. Using the Guru Gaitri Mantra is more difficult because there are more words to match with the actions. The eastern zone, or the initial and projective part of the brain, is stimulated by the word difference in the mantra. The Guru Gaitri Mantra is unique in its ability to effectively balance the initial and projective brain. When both parts of the brain unite in a balanced way, it enables the brain to function creatively, to communicate effectively and project any necessary defense. This exercise tests your I.Q. 8. Repeat Exercise 6 for 3 minutes.

9. Sit in Easy Pose with the eyes closed and meditate on the song, Himalaya or another beautiful song. As you listen to it let the sound of the words and music create a frequency for the right brain to receive and then stimulate the left-brain to create movement. Sing along with the tape and imagine you are flying at 40 thousand feet. Meditatively move the shoulders, torso, arms and hands to creatively express yourself. This is a basic human movement. Express your feelings freely through your body movement for 5 minutes.

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You can develop great healing power in your hands by learning to project beautiful songs in this way. It is an effective means of communicating with your inner self and of projecting your essence outward. And that essence is the healing force within you, which is God. It is especially beneficial for a woman to develop the ability to express herself through her body language to effectively communicate her presence. Otherwise, she taxes her sensual, sexual and sensitive self and loses her balance. Comments: Effective communication is when you can communicate the total you, honestly and freely. The two hemispheres of the brain must be in synchronized relationship for this to happen. This kriya is a brain doctor. It patches the two hemispheres together so you can both sense and project who you really are. This series reduces overall body tension and enhances the awareness of the self. The inner creative self can project its essence outward. Equally, it can receive the wholeness of others with complete empathy and intuition.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Deep Meditation: Balancing Your Aspects



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Silence: An Intention After our initial check-in this morning, we will begin conscious silence together. We ask that you set your intention and commit your mind—and your tongue—to experiencing deep silence together. In the early days, Yogi Bhajan would have us on complete silence during the White Tantric practices, which were often 10 days long. This is a great opportunity for you to take this one day and commit your mind to the experience of immersing yourself in silence. In this way, you allow the pulse of the Naad to surround you, penetrate you, and carry you through this entire day.

Kundalini Yoga Kriya We begin the day with a vigorous kriya to set our bodies and our minds to the practice. Then we’ll spend some time with the Master and experience thoughtlessness through his guided meditation.

Assigned Reading Chapters 12 & 13 from The Mind.



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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION WITHSTAND THE PRESSURE OF THE TIME Yogi Bhajan • July 4, 1984 • From the Fountain of Youth Manual

1. Sit in Easy Pose, and raise the arms up level to your face with bent elbows and begin shaking the whole body. It should be an inward body massage. Every muscle and fiber must shake. Arms, body and head should be moving. Create your own rhythm and style. You should be generating some heat. 15 minutes. This will release toxins from your muscles. When people get confined in a 4x4 foot cell, this is the only exercise that they can do. Get wild. Shake like an earthquake. It would take 20 hours of massage to get to this point. Cheeks should get red. You must come to the dead end of tiredness.

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2. Come standing up straight. Shake your hips from side to side by bending your knees alternately. Feet can either stay on the ground and your hands can dangle loosely or really twist your hips and jump in the air while pumping your arms. 8 minutes. Make it an energetic dance. Your thigh muscles should sweat. Gets rid of all the toxins, all the dirty fat, all the tissue deposits. This will get out all the old anger in your body.

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3. In Easy Pose, extend your arms straight over your head with your palms together. Arms against your ears. Twist your body left and right. 4 minutes. It is a triangular move and, if done powerfully, it will release your shoulders. 4. On your hands and knees, lift your left leg straight out behind you. Then touch your forehead to the ground and come back up, like push ups. 52 times.

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5. Come standing on your knees and bend back into Camel Pose, resting your hands on your heels. Then straighten back up onto your knees. 55 times. 6. Lie down flat on your back. a) Lift your knees up to your chest and place your hands under your hips. You may elevate your hips with your hands slightly, in order to get your knees to your chest. b) Swing your legs straight out. c) Then raise the legs up to 90 degrees. Then bring your knees back to your chest. 108 times. It is the movement of the Pavanmuktasana, where the prana is controlled by will.

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7. Lie down flat and put both your hands over your heart and relax. Raise your torso up and bring your forehead to your knees and then relax back down on your back. 26 times.

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8. Lie down flat on your back for a gong meditation. 8 minutes. You will become weightless and enjoy it. Relax.

Comments: Woman only has two problems—locked up pelvis and locked shoulders—otherwise perfect. This is to tune-up the nerves. If the nerves are not tuned-up how are you going to stand the pressure of time? 6c

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The science of shuniya An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

November 16, 1994

In this lecture, Yogi Bhajan guides us through the science of zero—shuniya. He says we think that our lives, our surroundings, our jobs, our ‘busy-ness’ is what really matters. Instead, “what is critical is that in reality, you have no experience of your life!” You fill yourselves with this “hypnotic go, go go” and miss out on the opportunity to actually live, to be guided by intuition and to clear the unconscious.


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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION KRIYA FOR THOUGHTFULNESS

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Yogi Bhajan • November 16, 1994

1. Sit with a straight spine. Hands are out in front of you at the navel point, palms facing each other, elbows at the side. Lock your mercury finger with your thumb (id or ego) in Buddhi Mudra. The meat of the thumb rests on the nail of the pinky and locks it down. Bend it very tightly. The rest of the fingers are straight. Make circles with the hands—180 times per minute; the hands circle toward the outside. The movement is very fast—about three times per second. 8 minutes. To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders tightly together and push the chest forward, while holding the hands in the mudra at the sides of your shoulders, palms facing forward. Release the shoulders, bend forward and exhale. Repeat twice more. 2. Curl the tongue and breath through the mouth—Sitali Pranayam—throughout this next exercise. Bring the hands in front of you, palms down, one hand over the other and begin making circles—180 revolutions per minute. Keep the hands at the level of the navel point and slightly apart. Fingertips point toward opposite elbows and the hands move in circles toward the torso; right hand moves counter-clockwise and left hand moves clockwise. 8 minutes. To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders tightly together and push the chest forward. Release the shoulders, come forward and exhale. Repeat twice more. Comments: This exercise can take away headaches. Create a magnetic field with your hands. This breath . . . it’s very cooling; it’s best for kidneys and it’s wonderful for adrenals, wonderful, absolutely wonderful, wonderful for urinary system, best for testosterone and most helpful to pituitary.


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3. Close the eyes. Bring your hands in front of the heart center— palms down, right hand resting on the left—and just balance and be steady. 15 minutes. To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders tightly together and push the chest forward. Release the shoulders, bend forward and exhale. Repeat twice more. You won’t feel tired, you won’t feel heavy, you won’t feel anything. . . . Close your eyes and just have no thought. Entertain no thought. Stay in a thoughtless state. I repeat, you are in a habit to hypnotize yourself. So please hypnotize yourself in a thoughtless state, ‘I am, I am not’ at the same time. Create a vacuum to allow prosperity, real happiness and infinity to enter.

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4. Chant—using the tip of the tongue—with Har Singh Nar Singh by Nirinjan Kaur. 9 minutes. Har singh nar singh neel naaraayan, Gursikh gur singh har har gayan Wha-hay guroo Wha-hay guroo, har har dhiayan, Saakhat nindak dusht mathaayan To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders together and push the chest forward. Release the shoulders, bend forward, exhale and relax.

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Core Alignment Meditations

We’ve spent a lot of time in the last three days in intellectual discussion and reviewing the Aspects and their role in the play and matrix of the mind. Today we focus on embodying the various Aspects by experiencing the meditations aligned with each of them. We’ll do the meditations for 31 minutes each. We’ll experience two Aspects within an hour and then have a short break in-between.

The Meditations All of these meditations can be found in The Mind book. ASPECT 1— Defender (page 156) Negative Mind x Manas ASPECT 2— Manager (page 160) Negative Mind x Ahangkar ASPECT 3— Preserver (page 164) Negative Mind x Buddhi ASPECT 4— Artist (page 168) Positive Mind x Manas ASPECT 5— Producer (page 172) Positive Mind x Ahangkar ASPECT 6— Missionary (page 176) Positive Mind x Buddhi ASPECT 7— Strategist (page 180) Neutral Mind x Manas ASPECT 8— Leader (page 184) Neutral Mind x Ahangkar ASPECT 9— Teacher (page 188) Neutral Mind x Buddhi



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ceremonial burning of the tattva sticks

We close this day of silence with a ceremony. As you gather to burn the tattvas from the group exercise on Day Two, take a moment to remember those five qualities that you are ready to now release into the flames, allowing the tapas, the fire, to transform them from living reality to ash, carried away on the wind. Meditate on the flame—as if it is a tratakum—and witness the transmutation of your elements. Know yourself to be purified by fire and commit your mind to live from this renewed state—your Self as perfected human psyche and its elevated angelic nature.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Mental Intrigues



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Small Group Check-in The Experience of Silence Find a comfortable place to sit with your study group and check-in. Discuss the experiences you had on Day Four during the meditations and period of silence. Consider some of the questions below. Pay attention to the nature of the meditative experience; how consciously meditating this week might be different than in the past for some people, how each Aspect brings with it a nuanced flow of thoughts and feelings (these can be bodily sensations, images, memories, attitudes about the meditation, etc.); and how the mind ensnares each of us in intrigues from our feelings, needs, fears and assumptions.

What was the content of your mind during yesterday’s meditations? Did you have mostly thoughts about the past? What kind of other thoughts? Doubts? Emptiness? What kind of feelings? Fantasies? Give an analogy of your mind during the different meditations? Was it like a quiet pond, or like a deep stormy ocean, or like the moon?

Which meditation was the most difficult for you? Why? Which meditation was the most important to you? Why? What did this deep process of meditation bring up in you? Were you able to dwell in the shuniya stage and observe how you experienced your mind/thoughts/feelings as you stimulated each Aspect? Were some Aspects more interesting, provocative, hypnotic or disturbing than others? In what way? What sensation or feeling triggered your subconscious and allowed the mind to lead or be led? For some people it may be curiosity, or appreciation, or anxiety? Feelings that arise due to certain Aspects act like a hypnotic king and are accompanied by his servants—rationalization, special importance, familiarity, fear, necessity and opportunity. What do you experience as your mindful presence wanes and the train of thoughts and feelings waxes into mental dominance?



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be happy, be neutral An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

October 27, 1992

“Technically speaking, man is born to be happy and man is born to be neutral.” By understanding the nature of polarity, man can develop the projection and breadth of an awakened human consciousness. Yogi Bhajan speaks to the false divisions that we create in religion, spirituality, god, humanity, politics, and so on. He says these divisions are pointless and painful. In the play of the universe, these polarities are seen for what they are—not good or bad, evil or godly—a dynamic. What is good for you may be painful for me; what is a gift for you may be a curse to me. He guides us into the deep stages of meditation and delivers the Neelkunt (the blue pearl) in which we can allow our mind to float, relaxed and free. A relaxed mind is a committed mind. An edited transcript of this class is included in your Study Guide.

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Yogi Bhajan • October 27, 1992

1. Sit in a very easy, graceful posture. Straight spine. Chin in, chest out. Your eyes are at the tip of the nose. When your eyes are at the correct angle, (about 60 degrees) you should see a little blue circle—a slice of the moon. Don’t loose sight of it. Turn your tongue and press it into the upper palate. Keep your molars locked. Watch your breath—concentrate on both nostrils (the ending points of ida and pingala) and breathe gracefully and consciously. Concentrate. Be alert. Remain absolutely still. Do not move. 11 minutes. To end: Inhale deep and focus and the brow. Hold the breath and contract. 15 seconds. Exhale. Repeat twice more. Relax.

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2. Bring your fingertips together and press the fingers in and out making circles with them. Expand and contract. Wiggle the toes, too, in a circular manner. 1-1/2 minutes. 3. Stretch the legs out in front of you. Make your hands into claws, in front of the shoulders. Flex the ankle and the toes toward your head. Stretch the Achilles tendon. Lock the molars. 3 minutes. Your fingers have to be steel claws and your toes must come backward at the maximum. Be steady.

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4. Look toward the sky and laugh with a very open mouth. Keep the neck extended and the face up. 2 minutes. 5. Now lock your lips together and shake your head very quickly. This is a very small but rapid movement from side to side. 15 seconds. 6. Talk, relax and visit each other.


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Small Group discussion on the master’s touch class

When the meditation called for a focus on the tip of the nose, to see the Neelkunt (subtle blue lotus), could you fix the eyes successfully? How did the blue arc appear to you? What made you successful in creating and locking that focus? When you attained that focus, what was helpful in staying there? How would you guide others to locate that focus in themselves? What was the sensation like to dwell in your Self? Describe the contrast between meditating on something versus meditating as ‘you’ in stillness, receiving all, equally, as unlimited? Have you always meditated in this manner—mindful presence? If not, what is the experience to open the field of your sensations and awareness and keep it open no matter what arises? Yogi Bhajan asks us to “process” our subconscious. When each thought or feeling arises, we recognize it not as our Self, even as we accept it as part of our experience and creation. We continue to establish our Self and our embrace of all that arises as God’s expression and an expression of our non-dual Self in the polar activity of the world. We process the reactions of our mind, our projections and our emotions by sensing and relaxing with each impression. In this way we explore the entire matrix of thoughts, reactions, projections, causations and consequences that come with each movement of the mind. What was your experience as you “processed”? How is this different than an intellectual or analytical process?

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Many people, with good reason, distrust or reject understanding the world or themselves from an “informed” first person perspective. That subjective position is filled with presuppositions, cultural overlays and emotional cloaking. The yogi in meditation would agree that a first person perspective is inherently corrupt. We prefer an impersonally personal first person, not subjective nor objective but awakened. This is what we refer to as intuition. In this position it is possible to notice any variation, no matter how minute, from the state of shuniya. In this way we can know—and know accurately. It does not mean we have no presuppositions or commotional fog; it means we can locate our self and recognize the presuppositions and commotions for what they are. We can “know without knowing.” This is a special perceptual position that is cultivated with great discipline and grows gradually as a skillful means within our consciousness. What was your experience of the intuitive state? How can you recognize the difference between a first person perspective and an awakened first person perspective in your body and mind? How does trust relate to your ability to develop or block this?



MIND & MEDITATION

Mental Intrigues: The Games People Play

We are all familiar with former versions of ourselves: times when our image was more important than who we really were; times when we were willing to sacrifice our truth to fit in; times when we didn’t even know who we were, only that we were lost in a tangle of internal narratives and the confusion of hidden motivations. As teachers, many of us see that painful ‘play’ still happening in our students—and if we’re really honest, in ourselves, too, depending on the circumstance and our particular weaknesses or strengths. Yogi Bhajan talks about this play: “Why not play one game to become timeless and one with God? That is the game of how you recognize and love your own deep truth in life. When you can play just one game that is boundless in time and space, then all others stop. The measure of the game is how near you are to your own truth, to the reality in your soul. How much consciousness and control of that truth do you have? You will be happy in your life in proportion to the degree that you have a handle on that truth, and that you are willing to pay for that truth, and that you can commit to and love that truth.” With this statement, we recognize that the tables have been turned and we are asked to play a very different kind of game. A game of destiny, not fate; a game of truth—at any cost. Mental intrigues are mentioned many times by Yogi Bhajan. Mental intrigues are what happens when the mind is left on automatic; thought streams and feelings take the lead and dominate you. Those intrigues limit our self-experience, self-trust and self-love. The intrigues create bad habits, selfdefeating patterns and confusion, making them all appear difficult, if not impossible, to change. As we took the journey through all the meditations and Aspects, you may have noticed some of these intrigues in your own thoughts.


Quotations from The Mind on Mental Intrigues Here are some quotations from The Mind to stimulate your awareness of your intrigues and their effect in your life: What is the problem? “The mind has to be developed to give you supportive strength. There is no reason to be unhappy other than the pain you get from the results of these intrigues.” p. 50 Why do intrigues get the upper hand in our life so easily? “You know better than to be unreal and to play games. You know if you lie and play games that it will come back to you ten times stronger. Then why do you act wrong? Why do you engage in endless petty games? You do it because your mind is ruled by mental fogginess. That fogginess comes from the power and craftiness of your mental intrigues. You have intelligence and common sense, but you don't meditate regularly to clear out the mind. When you fail to meditate, the combined strength of your subconscious and your thoughts catches you. This combination, when the subconscious links with the play of the mind, is the origin of mental intrigues and most of your self-defeating patterns. You need a habit to relate to your mind. You need to sit with your mind and review it, polish it, and direct it.” p. 51 When did it start? “If your inherent creativity expands that intrigue, your mind will spin it, magnify it, and spread it in every direction. It will weave that intrigue into your words and then project those words to every part of your mind. The result is you lose track of your real self and become shallow, hollow, and full of games. You lose your power of prayer. You lose your innocence. There is no one who can save you from this mess other than yourself. Your ability to get into trouble was given to you at the same time as your ability to excel and be great. It started in the very beginning.” p. 51


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How many intrigues are there? You have “as many minds as you need to do any action. Each part of the mind will have its own positive power as well as its own mechanism and its own intrigue. . . . But your mind always has the capacity to act beyond time and space. Simply direct it toward me.” p. 52 What is the mechanism like that produces the intrigues? “The mind is a vast, automatic mechanism that processes thoughts and sensations. When you focus on a thought and gather its associated thoughts—a double thought—the mind produces feelings. When your creativity spins out even more thoughts about the feelings and thoughts, the mind produces fantasy and imagination—a triple thought. All these thoughts, feelings, and fantasies mix, contrast, react, and project. The mind flips and twists. It changes perspectives and intensifies each sensation. Without any effort on your part, the mind produces many intrigues.” p. 52 What type of feeling does an intrigue produce and what is the effect of keeping that intrigue unprocessed by my meditative mind? “Your mind is constantly in motion. It produces every kind of thought. It has no base or fundamental reality on its own. It requires your direction. In order to act and create you must use the mind, but the mind can also use you. It can convince you of something, encourage you, then abandon you when it is wrong. Suppose you start to act on a bad thought. The mind encourages you. It tells you your idea is the best opportunity. Your Positive Mind stacks up many examples of similar ideas and the good that could happen. It does not give you a critical comparison to the problems that could happen, and it doesn't ask how this idea is related to you and your purpose. When a tragedy finally happens the mind suddenly tells you, ‘You were the one who did something wrong. You did a bad job. You are not worthy.’ The mind that brought up the plan and supported you now judges and condemns you. This creates a guilt concept. That guilt weakens you emotionally. You begin to feel small and out of control. You followed it, got caught in its impulses, and tangled in its intrigue. Unnecessary guilt is only one of many of the mind’s intrigues.” p. 52

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How do we try to deal with the bad feelings that arise from the intrigues? “Sometimes you sense when you are caught by your mental intrigues and feel limited and small. You react and try to expand any way you can. You may try to blow apart the feeling of limitation by stimulating the mind with drugs or with some type of extreme or extraordinary experience. That approach just causes more problems and pain.” p. 53 What is the best way to deal with the intrigues and respect the inherent creativity of our mind? “To stop the games and mental intrigues and to truly be happy you must develop a consistent attitude of human life in which you can excel above time and space, using your mind at the frequency of your soul. That is the attitude of a happy person. Every other approach and short-cut will prove to be false. . . . That is why you have a deep and profound instinct to feel the Infinite in you, a spiritual longing.” p. 53 “The cosmos is set up so that it is possible for an individual's magnetic field and mental projection to imprint and prevail on the universal magnetic field. When you know this as an experience, integrity and innocence replace your intrigues.” p. 57 “You must understand the problem. Mental intrigues are just like handcuffs, leg cuffs. They totally tie you down, they do not let you expand as the world into the bounty, the beauty, the infinity. Your God becomes the money-God. In reality, money-God is the wife of the Lord God, it is Lakshmi, it is not the Narayan and this is your mental intrigue, it is your mental puzzle, it is your mental misplacement and misconception. God shall be, will be, and is always the source of all life, all creativity. And to merge in God and in the bounty and beauty and infinity of God is the job, Ek purkha sagli pahi naar. There is a one being and everybody is the female (bride) of that being.

Everybody is the creativity of that being. and to remerge that is the principle which is involved.”


—Yogi Bhajan, April 13, 1983


MIND & MEDITATION

What is the quality that we awaken in shuniya and deep meditation? “You have not learned how to depend on the unseen and unlimited within you. Your soul has a fundamental property that when aligned with your mind gives you impact, intelligence, and effectiveness. Its fundamental property is to be saibhang—a self-illumined, aware, and radiant identity of God. It is not subject to anything. This has been a known fact, explored and experienced for centuries. The soul is a slave to none. In fact, everything else is subject to the soul and connected through its projection. So if you call on that and dwell in that, it works where no logic, reason, or mental intrigue can.” p. 55 How does stress affect the minds process and its intrigues? “In this game mastery is the goal and your main enemy is stress. When you are under stress you begin to lose your mind slowly, to a very polite degree. Your mind starts to wander on its own. It looks elsewhere for shelter and hope. It looks into your subconscious and pulls out of it every memory and every fragment of intentions and actions left incomplete in your life. You begin to live in the past. You do not act in the present but according to overlays from your past. When you cannot sense the present and you cannot connect to the future, life becomes very difficult. It is exactly that day that you are confused, and you lose mastery over your mind. You suddenly feel that you cannot meditate, do sadhana, or anything else to clear your mind. You start to feel bad and you want to defeat yourself, so you pick up every habit that makes you not prepare yourself for confidence and success. . . . Do you understand how this stress pattern works to lock you into the mind's intrigues? It turns the three minds against you.” p. 54



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Interactive Group Exercise Exploring Your Mental Intrigues

Part One Step One Meditate silently into the expanded self

Take a moment and meditate into your expanded self. Then become still in shuniya and sense the boundless openness of the universe as you allow and invite all its movements and projections into your awareness. Now become nothing. Still. Let your intrigues become present to you. Allow the patterns and feelings that seem to limit you or your relation to your Self become present. Do not react to them. Sense them. Observe them. Welcome them as part of your inherent creativity to be you, this soul, in this experience. Then gradually become increasingly neutral and relax completely in the feeling that these intrigues are not to be fought but understood, blessed and transmuted; just as the ocean senses the waves and accepts calm waters and angry storms into its nature and depth. Step two identity two intrigues

Identify two intrigues that are frequent visitors in your mind. They could be beliefs, past tendencies, a particular feeling about yourself, anything that limits you from your true identity, which is Infinity. Identify the habits that accompany them. Assign one word or name to each of these familiar intrigues. (Please note that this exercise can arouse very vulnerable feelings. In order to avoid any undesired or unnecessary intimacy, assign a word that is very neutral but calls up within you the familiar intrigue. You may still experience discomfort but it won’t be compounded by an intimacy that may feel inappropriate in the group environment.) Step three walk with sa ta na ma, choose partner

Walk around for a few minutes chanting SA TA NA MA. Choose a partner for this exercise and sit together.

Step four partner work on the intrigues

Write the two words or names for your two intrigues down on a piece of paper and give it to your partner. One partner lies down and the other sits in meditation. The partner who is sitting goes into shuniya. Make your aura and energy expanded, calm, still and equal in all directions and dimensions. Feel the clear presence of the Self. Sense your partner as they lie calmly. Place a hand over their heart center, without touching them. Sense how your energy shifts as you link to their aura and become one with them. Do nothing but connect, sense and accept. Once you are clear and stable in your perception, say aloud one of the words your partner shared with you, invoking one of their intrigues. Sense how your energy shifts with this. Allow the changes. Just notice with your intuition the energy, the flow of thoughts and sensations; stay present, calm, dwell in saibhung. Then invoke the name of the second intrigue. Just say it aloud once—the mind of your partner only needs one word. Sense again the change in your energy field. Notice how it is similar or differs from the first. After you establish this for a minute, begin to mentally chant Guru Guru Wahe Guru Guru Ram Das Guru. Feel your calm center. Anything that is less than infinite—pleasure, pain, enduring, fleeting, rational, irrational, gross or subtle—invite it into your heart center, the healing pool that is Guru Ram Das dwelling within you. Invite it into you as a healing pool of the Golden Temple. Allow yourself to be that expansive, that radiant. Relax every atom. Bless all and become completely neutral, relaxed, loving as your Self, one with the infinite in ALL. Then relax, release the connection by resting your hand down in your lap, and become centered in your Self. Share with your partner what you noticed and experienced with each intrigue. Again, be sensitive to and aware of the intimacy that this exercise elicits and allow your partner to establish the appropriate boundaries for themselves. Then shift roles and repeat the same procedure.

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Part TWO Small Group activity

As teachers, share examples of intrigues that emerge in your relationships with students from them or from yourself. Share examples of your intrigues that may arise in dealing with other teachers.

Step One

Get into your small groups. For 3 minutes make a list together of all the mental intrigues you noticed in yourself and others that you have noticed personally or as a teacher. Sample List of Intrigues: Tantrum Stress Living in the past not the present Childhood strategies Interlock neurosis Unnecessary Guilt Lying Addictions Feeling that you are limited and inferior Negative emotions of the tattvas expanded Self-deception Inferiority Intellectual rationalization Confabulation Depersonalizing (Using higher chakras to rationalize and

Step three

Using the mental intrigue you’ve been discussing, come up with a 1-2 minute skit that reveals the intrigue and an approach to overcome it from the many strategies you’ve discussed.

Interactive Group Exercise Mental Intrigues: Skits

Each group will now present their skit to the rest of the participants.Take a moment after each skit to discuss the intrigue, its dynamics and primary elements, as well as the strategy to divert or change the course of the intrigue. Did it work? Why or why not? Are there other strategies you’ve used as a Teacher for similar situations?

see others as a problem to be solved and not a person to be in relationship with.) Step TWO

Group Discussion

Select one to focus on in your group. What are some of the most common intrigues? What is its nature? What is its effect? How does it manifest in behaviors? How is it revealed in various situations? Can others sense the intrigue being active, even if the person with the intrigue does not? What are some strategies that can release you and your mind of the shackles of this intrigue: meditation, communication, habits, relationships, feedback, other? What would make this intrigue seem hard to change? How is it easy to change? Most feelings and behavioral intrigues have a belief or an internal narrative that supports it. What type of narrative and beliefs tend to go with the intrigue you chose? What would be a new narrative, self-talk, affirmation or belief that would facilitate the change?


Share the strategies that you arrived at for these particular intrigues. Do they seem to be universally applicable? If not, why? How do we as Teachers overcome the psyche of the individual personality and find tools that can apply to everyone? What are some particular meditations or other technology that came to mind to deal with these most common mental intrigues?


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The Two Capacities: Shuniya and Applied Intelligence

Shuniya In order to address our mental intrigues and free ourselves from the trap of hypnotic action and reaction, it is essential that we develop our meditation and the mindful state of shuniya. We’ve spent a lot of time cultivating shuniya. Shuniya resolves and heals many problems in the mind and also the body. Heal your relationship to any thought and that shift can affect anything from a momentary mood to a relentless emotional interlock, from an atom to the universe.

Applied Intelligence The other capacity Yogi Bhajan emphasize in the lectures is applied intelligence—its capacity to select and direct, to be in subjective control of its projections. We’ve spent a considerable amount of time exploring the Projections and Aspects and the way the mind functions in relationship to finding balance in relationship to thoughts, feelings, and intentions. To increase this capacity, we will work directly on the frontal brain and our sensitivity to the flow of thoughts the mind gives us. Does each thought relate to the success of my souls intention? If not, reject the thought. Send it back to the infinite mind or let it become nothing. KUNDALINI YOGA KRIYA The next set will help stimulate this capacity for applied Intelligence. After we make the brain very alert and gather our energy for change, we will do a class with the master that will provoke a fearful intrigue. It will clear mental paranoia by using the body’s automatic response to fear. It is a great example of how the yogis used the patterns of the body without prejudice and transformed them into an elevated capacity to act with steadiness and excellence in the world.

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MIND & MEDITATION KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION KRIYA FOR THE FRONTAL LOBE Yogi Bhajan • From Yoga for Youth & Joy

1. Sit in Easy Pose with your hands on your knees. The chest is out and the shoulders are back. Maintaining this posture, begin vibrating the front of the face, using a very rapid and short up–and–down motion. Try to move just the forehead. The breath will adjust itself. Continue for 8-9 minutes. This exercise is called Mastak Subhaee. It works on the change and replacement of gray matter in the brain. 2. Remain in Easy Pose with the hands on the knees. Begin rolling the head on the neck in the shape of a figure eight. The chin comes down to the center of the chest with each circle, twice in a full repetition of the movement. Make sure that the exercise is performed powerfully and steadily with equal timing for each revolution of the head. Continue for 3 minutes at a moderate pace and then sit still for 30 seconds. This exercise is called Infinity Kriya. It is very powerful and must be done carefully and consciously. The effect is to balance the central ear, which affects clear and conscious thought. 3. Still in Easy Pose, bring the arms straight out from the sides of the body palms up at shoulder level. Bring the hands into fists with the thumbs outside. Inhale and bring both fists in to the top of the shoulders while stretching the elbows out as powerfully as possible and flexing your biceps. Return to the original position on the exhale. Continue the motion for 9 minutes. Recording: Sukhmanee Sahib.

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2

3

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4. Remain in Easy Pose. Still listening to Sukhmaee Sahib, stretch the arms straight out in front of the body at a 45-degree angle with the palms facing down, fingers held together on each hand. In this position begin shaking the head as fast as possible in a very short sideways motion. Shake the skull in a continuous motion for 1 minute. Inhale and relax.



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stop your mental games An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

February 21, 1989

In this meditation, Yogi Bhajan says that he’s going to ‘jerk the jerk out of us.’ The capacity of our mind is infinite and yet we are drowning in thoughts. We believe these thoughts and they reign over us. Instead of relating to our newness in each moment, each breath; instead of rejoicing in the fact that every cell is renewed within 72 hours, we carry around stories from our childhood, adolescence, and adulthood about this and that—how I’ve been hurt, how much pain I’m in, and so on. So, Yogi Bhajan says we must be able to use our applied intelligence, the capacity of the mind, to determine the thoughts we dwell on, the intentions we manifest, and the actions we take. He basically challenges us to grow up—quit playing games and master our mind with all its fears, pride, paranoia, and fecklessness: “Process yourself first by cleaning, cleansing, marbleizing, lifting your values up and then lifting yourself up.” An edited transcript of this class is included in your Study Guide.

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MIND & MEDITATION • STUDY GUIDE KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION TO CLEAR OUT YOUR MENTAL PARANOIA Yogi Bhajan • February 21, 1989

1&8

1. Sit in meditative, yogic posture. Stick out your tongue—not all the way— just relax the tongue. With the diaphragm, strongly exhale through the mouth over the relaxed tongue. This is called Paranoia Breath. This is a heavy, deep breath from the diaphragm. 1.5- 3 minutes. Comments: Feel afraid! Do it heavily from the diaphragm. You think this is a joke. If you do it about twenty times a day you shall never have nightmares. It is not a joke—this breath. If this breath is practiced two things will never hurt you. One is hysteria, the other is paranoia. It is a yogic breath. You only do it in a natural emergency. We are asking you to do in a conscious emergency. I want it to be done by the pull of the diaphragm. When paranoia hits you, hit it with this breath. 2. Open your mouth and do Breath of Fire through a rounded mouth. Very quickly and forcefully. 30 seconds.

2&9 3. Bring you hands into Ravi Mudra—ring finger and thumb together. Other three fingers are straight and open—stiff. Now circle the hands around each other in front of the chest. Only the fingers move over each other—not the entire hand. Move as fast as you can. 4 minutes. To end: Inhale deep, close your eyes and lock the hands at the heart center. Comments: Your nostrils will start having pressure on ida and pingala, if you really do this exercise faster. You will have a very impulsive state here, right on the both sides where ida and pingala starts. That is all we want. Actually we want that pressure and the moment the nose starts showing a little red color in the aura. I want the big nose. They call it clown nose.

3&7



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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION TO CLEAR OUT YOUR MENTAL PARANOIA

4. Meditate with the hands gripped at the heart center. Right hand over left, grip tightly. Eyes are closed and focused at the hands. [Gong is played.] 7 minutes.

4

5. Relax the hands down and continue to meditate to the gong. The body will naturally adjust itself. [Music is played over the gong for the last 5 minutes: Singh Kaur’s Beloved God.] Total: 8 minutes. Mentally go with the sound but not the words. 6. Begin Breath of Fire. 30 seconds. Now begin to clap the hands over the head—fast and powerful! 30 seconds. 7. Repeat Exercise #3. 1 minute. 5 8. Repeat Exercise #1: Powerful Paranoia Breath. Move the tailbone. Pull it. 1 minute. 9. Repeat Exercise #2: Breath of Fire through rounded mouth. 15 seconds. 10. Relax. Recommendation: Drink juice and liquids after this meditation. No solids. Also drink lots of liquids on the following day. Comments: This meditation is to jerk out the jerk in you.

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KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION SITALEE UNI KRIYA Yogi Bhajan • April 19, 1990

A rare secret kriya of the very inner essence of the sacred yoga.

1

1. Sit in Easy Pose with a straight spine, chin in, and chest lifted. Place your hands on the gates of your face in Shanmukhi Mudra. (See commentary.) Whistle along with the music of Sat Nam, Wahe Guru Indian version #2. Whistle both on the inhalation and on the exhalation. “Use your whistle with a double force: out and in.” Do not put pressure on your fingers in the mudra, keep your touch on the gates light and polite. 31 minutes. 2. Relax your hands and take your fingers off your face. Remain sitting and begin shaking every part of your body as fast as you can. (This exercise was done to the rhythm of the Bhangra Rhythms tape.) 5-1/2 minutes.

2

Use power, use strength, use projection and imagination. Be creative. Dance your body away. Let the circulation (flow), let the nervous system put a combination. You must bring the body to a sweat. If you do not sweat you will lose this best chance to be young. To End: Inhale deeply, hold your breath for 15 seconds while you stretch your body upward, spreading the fingers apart and letting the five tattwas balance themselves. Make the fingers like steel prongs. Exhale. Inhale deeply, hold the breath (5-10 seconds), and repeat the stretch. Exhale. Last time: inhale deeply, hold the breath (5-10 seconds), and repeat the stretch. Exhale and relax.

Sitali Uni Kriya Throughout today’s exercises, we’ve provoked, processed, and cut through the intrigue by either projecting it to infinity— expanding ourselves in relationship to the intrigue—or using mantra to heal and protect and break through the patterns long established in the subconscious regarding any particular intrigue, thought or feeling. From this place of applied intelligence and deep relationship to shuniya, from this neutral space, we revisit our


tattvas once again in the following meditation. We are promised with this kriya that we will not be the same tomorrow as we are today. After the work we’ve done, how can we not be changed? So rejoice in the shift and allow your Self to dance in this new freedom, this new awareness, this new relationship to time and space and intention. The only thing we are asked is to be ourselves—to quit playing the games and to simply be. Be to be. Be you.


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Comments: These are the most delicate points in your whole body. Now look straight through your closed eyelids and create a screen. Bring your body to a standstill. This is just an acupuncture touch. It is just a very light, polite touch because the five antennas and five tattvas (earth, air, water, fire and ether) have to be balanced. That is all it is. Sun point is the earlobe down. Sun, the heat is in the earlobes. Upper eyelid is for the simple sense of the ether. Ida and Pingala (the nostrils) is the prana (air tattva). The lips: upper lip is water and lower lip is earth. All these tattwas can be experienced within the body. You may feel irritated in this position, but focus on the achievement. . . . And tomorrow (after doing this kriya) you will not be the same as you are today. There is no way. That is a gospel truth. Shanmukhi Mudra (delicately touching the seven gates in the head to help us focus on the inner world): Raise the arms in front of the face with the elbows pointing out to the sides. Place the thumbs gently on the sun point of the ears (from the earlobe down, “those little things which the master pulls when you do wrong”), place the Jupiter (index) fingers lightly and delicately on the closed eyelids, place the Saturn (middle) fingers lightly on each side of the tip of the nose (where the Ida and Pingala end), place the Sun (ring) fingers on the upper lips and place the Mercury (pinkie) fingers on the lower lips.

Commentary by Hari Jot Kaur: The label on the videotape of this class says, “this class is required to be done in evening, with only citrus eaten after 12pm (lunch).” Nothing was said in this class or in the previous class giving this instruction. Rarely, however, this type of instruction was communicated by phone to the majority of students in time for them to meet the requirements before class. No instructions were given whether or not the citrus diet is required for when this kriya is done as a 40-day meditation. Without having other information, we can probably assume that the citrus requirement holds whenever this kriya is practiced.

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CHAPTER SIX

The committed Mind: Effective Action & Happiness



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The committed mind effective action & happiness

To be consciously conscious, our actions must originate from consciousness in each moment. Awareness of our demoting habits and cultivating promoting habits is a lifetime exercise—breath by breath, moment to moment. The singular goal of the awakened, diamond mind, is the experience of the committed Self and being able to use the mind to project that commitment into each moment of our lives. Let’s explore our ability to awaken our virtues through the neutral mind, committed language, and meditation. We can approach neutrality in the mind—that zero point, or shuniya—through vastness and the experience and realization of Shakti or by becoming humble and embodying Bhakti through devotion, love and selfless service of the Infinite and God in each person, in each moment. We will play with the structure of the mind, look at our habits— those that serve and elevate us and those we wish to change. Then we will transmute those areas of our mind and self using the synchronization meditation, awakening our intuition and doing a deep meditation on the foundation mantra of Kundalini Yoga, the Adi Shakti Mantra: Ek Ong Kaar, Sat Nam Siri, Wahe Guru.

Assigned Reading Chapters 7,8, and 11 from The Mind.

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committed language Speaking from your committed Self, your true identity, takes courage, awareness, and sensitivity. So often we speak only from fear or anger—or worse, we lie. Yogi Bhajan has said: “Normally you do not speak with committed language. The result is your love is not committed, your compassion is not committed, and your relationships are not committed.... What is a lie? It is anything spoken with uncommitted language. Any word spoken under fear in which your personality is not clear is a lie. Lying is not a sin. Lying is a habit. It is a damaging habit, but just a habit lik any other habit. Why do p. 74-5 people lie? They lie because they cannot love.” We don’t use our applied mind to speak from the truth of our personality, our reality. We play games; we try to be clever; we cut ourselves off from our own reality. And then, how do we ever find our way back? Yogi Bhajan continues: “Who do you think you are? You are not your mind, nor do you belong to the mind. The mind is yours. If the mind is yours, where do you apply the control to direct it? Where do you apply the analytic mind to understand what you have done? That is the use of committed language—where the self is projected in its totality without limit. Instead you just speak your fears, your anger, your hatred, and your ignorance. . . . To understand how to use your mind and break the web of lies, you must grasp the nature of committed language.” p. 76-7

There are three levels of speech that we’re familiar with from Kirtan Kriya: Human (spoken) Lover (whispered) Angelic (silent) So too, there is a trinity present in the language of projected Infinity: the body, the mind, and the soul. “Projecting with Infinity in our speech is the base of committed language.”


Interactive Group Exercise Projecting Infinity through our Speech

From the examples given by Yogi Bhajan on p. 77 of The Mind, we will practice speaking from this projection. Get into triads and practice the following three examples: 1 Two Stroke Language In committed language, say, “I am your friend.” Speak from the heart. Committed language would simply say: “Hey friend!” This is the Naad language; it has two strokes to its impact. “Hey” is the projection and “Friend” is the confirmation. Practice saying it in this way and feel the difference in the Heart Center. Practice several other examples speaking from the heart, using Naad Language, this two stroke language for impact. 2 Triple Stroke Language In committed language, say, “You are very beautiful.” Try it out yourself first. Committed language would say: “Wow, hey you.” This basic phrase has a triple stroke to its impact and accent. “Wow” is the projection. “Hey” expands the projection. “You” is the personal penetration. This triple stroke commands the mind from the heart and reaches the Neutral Mind. Practice using the triple stroke to speak from the committed heart and penetrate the Neutral Mind of the listener. 3 Capturing the Three Funcitonal Minds Committed language captures the Negative and Positive Minds and uses the Neutral Mind. All three are balanced. Any confirmed commitment must contain both polarities. When you speak a promise, speak to both sides of the coin—negative and positive. Instead of saying to someone, “I have told you the truth,” you must qualify it in committed language. Say, “This is the truth, take it or leave it.” That is committed language. People who speak the truth do not sell themselves to you. When you speak truth you don’t need to sell anything. It is already sold. Practice projecting the truth from the Neutral, Negative and Positive Minds—all three in balance.


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develop your mental strength An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

September 12, 1989

“The subject is ‘getting it together. . .’” Yogi Bhajan addresses our basic tendency to avoid the mind, to avoid discipline, and says that if we would only rely upon our basic mental strength, it would be very simple. “Switching gears from a negative mind to a positive mind to a neutral mind” is our strength. He speaks about the power of the subconscious, especially when the thoughts, motivations, and feelings from the subconscious roam freely through our conscious mind—without the discipline of applied consciousness. This ability to apply the mind’s own inherent mechanisms toward our intentions, projections and consciousness is the key to our strength, our happiness, and our mastery.


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MIND & KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION BUTTERFLY KRIYA

MEDITATION

Yogi Bhajan • September 12, 1989

POSTURE:

Sit on your heels.

MUDRA:

Bring the heels of your hands together in front of the throat— making a V with your hands. The four fingers are together and the thumbs are touching and stretched back toward the body.

EYES:

Closed eyes at the tip of the nose.

MOVEMENT:

From this V, begin rhythmically clapping the hands. The movement is like a hinge or a butterfly. Keep the thumbs together and the heels of the hands together as you open and close the hand. Not too fast, but steady. TIME:

11 to 62 minutes.

It will create the sound, Har, Har, if you really do it right. That’s where the sound Har came. Har, Har —if you accurately take pavan, the air, it will create the sound, Har. It’s a natural thing. Mentally the sound is Har, physically the sound is Har, concentrate. COMMENTS:



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Group Discussion:

What can you apply from the committed language exercises to support and cultivate your promoting habits?

preparing to choose a Meditation for a personal sadhana Now we return to the work we did earlier in the course and use what we know about how habits, our tendencies, and our essence to choose a meditation to work on for the next 90 days. In combination with the Adi Shakti Mantra, this particular selection will be your personal sadhana, your opportunity to work on a particular habit and projection.

How do you respond to Yogi Bhajan’s statement: “You is not a criteria which is negotiable. You is Dharma. You is the God. You is the truth. Everthing that is, is in you.”

Kundalini Yoga Meditation Before we begin the selection of a projection, let’s do a meditation to center ourselves in our intuition.

Applied Consciousness and the Committed Mind How can we apply what we’ve learned from meditation to our habits?

Discuss the notion of mental strength in relationship to “you” and your ultimate projection, ultimate truth, ultimate reality.

interactive group exercise an aquarian interview Part one small groups

Come into your small groups and create an Aquarian questionnaire of about 10 questions which test the level of relationship that one has to his or her mind. For example: 1. How often do you do things out of habit? 2. Do you ever think about your thoughts? 3. Do you usually act out your impulses? 4. Do you see yourself as a demanding person? And so on. . . Part Two interviewing people in the community

Find a partner and set out into the community. Find a place where people are waiting: bus stops, food court at the mall, etc. Interview one or two people and be very courteous. Part Two share with whole group

Come back to your groups and evaluate the answers. Compare your group’s questionnaire and the results of the different interviews.

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a MIND & MEDITATION KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION

FOUR STROKE BREATH

TO

BUILD INTUITION

Yogi Bhajan • June 9, 1998

MUDRA:

Place your hands together in Prayer Mudra. Keep the Jupiter (index) fingers extended as you interlock the other fingers to clasp your two hands together. Cross the thumbs.

EYES:

The eyes are nine-tenths closed.

POSTURE:

In a comfortable seated position, place the mudra a little below your nose where you can look at the tips of your Jupiter fingers through the one-tenth opening of your eyes. BREATH:

Inhale in four powerful strokes through the “O” mouth (1 stroke per second = 4 second inhale) and exhale in one powerful stroke through the nose (1 second). Continue for 16 minutes.

Whosoever does best, will get the best experience. I can’t do this for you, I can only tell you what to do. Use your own diaphragm, move your own central (channel), open up your own chakras, achieve your own results. These exercises are time bound. Within that time you should achieve a sensory system. Take a heavy stroke through the mouth and push it out through the nose. To end: Sit straight, inhale, hold your breath 20 seconds, and stretch your arms out to your sides. Palms facing upward. That will give you power to balance your central spinal column. Exhale. Inhale deep, hold your breath 20 seconds, and stretch your arms horizontally and stretch your spine vertically. Make a T-square. Exhale. Inhale deep, hold your breath 20 seconds, and open up your fingers, making them like steel. Squeeze your entire energy and bring it into your arms. Exhale and relax. Comments: In the Aquarian Age intuition will be the principle of identity. This is a little meditation to see how well we can tell our own pituitary to work for us. . . . You must know reality by intuition. Not by knowledge. (By the time reality becomes knowledge) It’s too late.



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Identifying Your Projection for your 90-day meditationsadhana Continuing our earlier exercise of working with the chart in the back of The Mind book, we now turn to look more closely at each of the projections. Remember the three Aspects you identified for yourself. There are three projections associated with those Aspects (9 of the 27 Projections). Using your intuition, determine which of these meditations you should pursue as a 90-day sadhana to balance that particular Aspect and Projection. To review, let’s look at the chart again. You established which mind was strongest and weakest. And you selected your strongest and weakest Aspect. In determining the projection you’d like to work on, a good place to start is to look at those two Aspects. Think of the mental intrigues that trap you. What behaviors and what decisions distract you, block your intuition or lead you to a poor choice? What feeling or sense of importance hypnotizes you in relationship to this Aspect and keeps you from fully functioning in your daily life? With those intrigues in mind, look at the projections associated with your three Aspects. The projections reflect an attitude of your Self in the functioning of this Aspect. When the Aspect is well-balanced then the projections are synchronized and support the Aspect. Look at your strongest and weakest Aspect. Which is more imbalanced in your habits and relationships? Select the projection that will adjust the attitude and create greater balance in that particular Aspect. When the Aspects are balanced then you can shift gears smoothly between the three Functional Minds and deliver your Self fully to each moment, completing necessary actions and expressing your reality and destiny. You will be intuitive and happy.

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Here’s a summary of the steps: You’ve Identified your three Aspects—one from each of the Impersonal and Functional Minds. 1 Meditate on the intrigues associated with your

strongest and weakest Aspects. 2 Review the three Projections from each of these

Aspects—9 in all. 3 Meditate and use your intuition to determine which

of these Projections would bring one of your Aspects into greater balance—either balancing a strong Aspect, strengthening a weak Aspect, or discovering a new mirror of yourself through the most neutral Aspect. You’ll do a 90-day sadhana using this Projection (11 minutes a day). After 90 days of that projection, switch to another Aspect. Re-evaluate at that time and look for ways to create balance again.

Group Discussion We have mental intrigues to watch; Aspects to balance; Functional Minds to switch gears within and process thoughts; projections to synchronize; and facets (habits) to be aware of. At this point, ask questions regarding the projection you’ve chosen or the details of the meditation associated with it. Use your peers and your trainer to prepare yourself for the best and most fruitful experience in this effort to balance the Aspects and project Infinity.



a MIND & MEDITATION MIND & MEDITATION KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION

BALANCE

THE

MIND 5

Yogi Bhajan • April 7, 1992

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1. Sit in Easy Pose. Sit very calm and quiet. Close the eyes. Bring the hands to the brow point in Prayer Pose with the thumbs locked. Begin moving in counter-clockwise circles from the pelvis all the way up the spine including the hands. Keep the hands above the eyebrows. Matamandir Singh’s Halleluiah. Start singing with it after 12 minutes. Total: 20 Minutes. You close your eyes and worship God. It is called Arta. It’s actually a self-worship if you really want to understand. It is called Jan Puja— self-worship. Loosen your pelvic bone. Move your own universe. Get into a state of ecstasy. Inhale. Exhale and immediately move into the next exercise. 2. Hold hands with one another and close your eyes. No hand should be single. Sit with chin in and chest out. Sit straight. Concentrate at the soft-spot at the crown of the head—the 10th gate. Breathe long and deep. Breathe consciously. Be steady. This meditation is done in silence. 15 minutes. To end: Inhale deep and release your hands. Exhale. If you can concentrate on this point at the time of death, the scripture says you go straight to God. This is the time to prove to yourself that you and God are One. You can free yourself of all diseases at this time. Inhale. Exhale and immediately move into the next exercise. 3. Bring your forearm to 90 degrees so that the hands are above the shoulders with the fingers open. Begin making counter-clockwise circles with your arms and upper body. Sing along with Nirinjan Kaur’s Every Heartbeat. Move the energy in all parts of you. 5 minutes. As you complete this exercise, look around and choose a partner as you get ready for the next exercise. Inhale. Exhale and quickly move into the next exercise. 4. Stand up and dance with a partner. Punjabi Drum music is played. a. Look into the eyes of your partner. Move your hips. Move your arms. Hands stay above the head as you dance. 2-1/2 minutes. b. Dance freely moving your waist; hands can move as you like. 4-1/2 minutes. c. Begin to clap your hands. This removes arthritis. 30 seconds.



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a


5. Sit in groups of four and play patty cake. Clap your hands. a) Then turn and clap hands with your partner. b) Clap your hands then clap hands with the person sitting across from you. c) Clap your hands then turn to the opposite side and clap hands with your other partner. 2 minutes. Begin chanting Har with the tip of the tongue on every clap of the hands. 1 minute. Begin chanting ‘I God’ as you clap your hands and ‘You God’ as you clap your partner’s hands. 1 minute.

5

5a

6. Inhale deep and raise your hands up—as if you were surrendering. Concentrate at the 10th gate. 1-1/2 minutes. To end: Inhale deep and hold tight; synchronize the body and spread the fingers. Cannon fire exhale. Repeat twice more. Relax. 5b

Comment: This is one of the most sacred kriyas of Kundalini Yoga

6 5c

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MIND & MEDITATION

Interactive Group Process The Adi Shakti Mantra: The Foundation of your 90-day Sadhana

Long Ek Ong Kaar can be done for many different time periods; even saying it 1-7 times can change your consciousness. The first sadhana given to us by Yogi Bhajan was 2-1/2 hours of Long Ek Ong Kaar. He used it in many different kriyas for many different time periods, 11 minutes, 22, etc. When he explained the benefits, the first thing he said was to do it for at least 37-1/2 minutes for the following reason: Think of the kundalini rising until all the fibers of your aura are vibrating and the circumvent field is fully activated so that you, as an individual unit, your psycho-electromagnetic field, can now project into the universe; it takes this amount of time for the Self to reflect the Total Self—the macrocosm of you to the microcosm of you—to awaken the kundalini and create the communication with our universal self. Follow this with 11 minutes of the projection meditation because at that moment you’re open, beyond whatever emotional pattern you might have, to allow your larger self to be able to guide you and expand you. When you get your entire self vibrating—ang sang wahe guru—it allows this connection. When you allow the universe to come in, at that moment, the meditation can become very effective. Most of the time we are afraid to make that connection, to allow that kind of union; so the benefit of Long Ek Ong Kaar for 37-1/2 minutes is that it reaches that very human moment, that point of antar naad gyan, where the inner power of the naad brings knowledge to you, and at that point of openness, you do the projection meditation and it accelerates the progress. Every Teacher should master this.

Group Discussion Check-in with your small groups and then open the discussion to the larger group. What are some of the refinements that you noticed when you were led through the various meditations? What is best way to teach meditation or “to act as a teacher to guide the experience of student?” As Teachers, what one thing will you bring from this course back into your everyday Kundalini Yoga classes? In your personal life? In your work?

90-day Personal Sadhana Part of elevating the consciousness and experiencing the Transformation necessary in the Level Two Curriculum is participating in a 90-day follow-up with your groups and your own mind. For 90-days you will be doing the 37-1/2 minutes of Long Ek Ong Kaar (The Adi Shakti Mantra) along with 11 minutes of your personal Projection meditation you chose. This is not to replace the early morning Aquarian Sadhana, but rather, an opportunity for you to dive deeply into the workings of your own mind, habits, and consciousness and balance your projection as an individual Self and as the identity of Teacher.

Closing Ceremony Return again to the First Pauree of Japji and will all you’ve learned and experienced throughout the course, meditate on the sound current and relax the mind. After chanting for 11-31 minutes, sit in silence and recognize where you are in space and time. Become aware of a new understanding with this First Pauree; become aware of a new understanding of your Self and your mind; rejoice in your new skills and approaches to your seemingly incontrovertible “problems”; and reflect on your newly attained clarity.



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MIND & MEDITATION

Self-Assessment for mind & meditation

Date: __________________

For each of the following statements rank yourself on a scale of one to nine. Marking one or two means very little, not at all or completely disagree. Marking a five means neutral or you cannot tell or doesn't apply. However, do your best to give a mark for each item based on your normal experience of yourself, your meditations and the experience you just went through. Marking an eight or nine means very much, completely agree or definitely true for me. Mark all of these questions quickly, according to your first instinct.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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I easily focus my mind. I easily find the point of stillness within me that lets all thoughts go without reaction. I understand and can produce the state of shuniya in an instant. I recognize the mental intrigues that my subconscious tries to play between my ego and my mind. I consciously cultivate my intuition regularly through meditation. I can guide the flow of my thoughts through the three minds so that I can act with intelligence. I have a strong and balanced negative mind. I have a strong and balanced positive mind. I have a strong and balanced neutral mind. I can identify which of the nine aspects is strongest and weakest within my dynamic personality. I use both intuition and intelligence to serve my consciousness. I have a habit to commit my mind by the use of the committed word. I can identify the qualities and the gunas of my mind as my ego over-stretches or under-stretches itself. When my mind over-stretches with the ego, I practice bringing it back to the sattvic quality with buddhi, and only then do I act. I do sadhana and consciously clear my subconscious regularly. When I recognized a fear going through my mind, I poke, provoke, confront and elevate that taught rather than simply moving away from it or hiding within a positive feeling. I use the sensation of vastness to become zero. I use the feeling of love and bhakti, or devotion, to become zero. I use the process of letting go, forgiving and releasing to become zero. I cultivate my daily, promoting habits in order to balance my tattvas and master my mind. I do not identify with my mind. When I meditate, I can sense my sensations. When I meditate, I can sense myself sensing my sensations. When I meditate, I can sense my awareness sensing my sensations. When I meditate, I can release my sense of self and become selfless in the infinite matrix of what is. When I meditate, I can use my intuition & my intention to merge into any object or person in the universe. Whatever I feel or sense, I can synchronize with my awareness into infinity to create a neutral state that produces healing and a neutral presence. I can easily locate, recognize and teach the Blue Pearl meditation point which we also called the Neelkant. I often act on impulse before I know what it is.



MIND & MEDITATION

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I use my meditative mind when I meditate, but often, I fail to use it when I'm in situations of conflict at work or in interpersonal relationships.

1 1 1 1

I know which kind of foods help my mind be meditative and I choose to include those in my diet.

2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6

7 7 7 7

8 8 8 8

9 9 9 9

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9


I can merge my mind into the shabd guru. I control my mind, rely on my intuition, trust my consciousness and act with fearlessness. I create the state of shuniya each day and in each important moment and place within that an intention that comes from my neutral mind and fulfills my soul. I can meditate for 2 1/2 hours without distraction or movement. I understand & can teach how the dynamics of the mind generates the 9 aspects and 27 projections.


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MIND & MEDITATION STUDY GUIDE

MIND & MEDITATION • STUDY GUIDE

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• KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION STUDY GUIDE



Table of Contents

Introduction

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Chapter One: Mind, Meditation & Consciousness

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Lecture: Break the Mind’s Hypnotic Trance Study Questions and Projects

Chapter Two: Awakening Intuition: Synchronize Your Brain & Your Mind

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Lecture: Awaken the Dormant Human Consciousness Study Questions and Projects

Chapter Three: Dynamics of the Mind: Chambers, Aspects & Thoughts

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Lecture: Being Human is Being Intuitive Study Questions and Projects

Chapter Four: Deep Meditation: Balancing Your Aspects

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Lecture: The Science of Shuniya Lecture: Be Happy, Be Neutral Study Questions and Projects

Chapter Five: Mental Intrigues

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Lecture: Stop Your Mental Games Study Questions and Projects

Chapter Six: The Committed Mind: Effective Action & Happiness

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Lecture: Develop Your Mental Strength Study Questions and Projects

Journaling: A Journey


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KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION STUDY GUIDE •

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4




Introduction to The Mind & Meditation Home Study GUide

THE GOAL OF THE TRANSFORMATION COURSE WORK— Teacher Training Level 2—is to awaken in your heart and to embody in your life the skills of a Teacher. You are not here to simply learn more exercises and meditations. You are here to deepen your practice, your commitment, and your presence as a Teacher. You are here to discover all the implications of just what that word, Teacher, really means—not only sitting in front of a yoga class, but also in the world. A central problem for all paths of consciousness is how do we sustain the insight, energy and practices we learn during an intensive training once we find ourselves back in the familiar environments we live in? Back home, immersed in our routines, our habits loom large. We become forgetful. We rationalize, get distracted and often coast along, somewhere knowing that in order to coast, we must be going downhill; and therefore, not reaching for the excellence of which we are capable. Yogi Bhajan approached this several ways. First, he acknowledged the dignity and sovereignty of each person and left it to each of us to “self-initiate.” If we do not take on the challenge to respect and care for ourself, who will? So, there is no trick, no short cut. It is up to us to become still and present, then decide, commit, practice and allow the natural urge of consciousness to transform us to full awareness. Second, he gave us very precise, effective and efficient technology to change quickly and automatically. Third, he encouraged a lifestyle that supports consciousness in our nutrition, exercise, service orientation, honest work and relationships. Fourth, he gave us the Golden Link to connect to the Master's touch of compassion, awareness and vastness. He did that in the Adi Mantra and in his direct confrontation


with the ego of each student. Finally, he blessed us all through the power of his prayer and his guru to always have a chance and an open door to bow and transcend our ego. Technology, timelessness and values—his gifts to us unto Infinity. “Home study” can have two meanings: the first and more common notion is to study outside of class; the second and deeper meaning is to study from the perspective of the “home,” which for us is the soul and consciousness. We want this guide to be a means toward both. The work you do outside of class is a simple but important step toward embodying what you learn—which is a fundamental need and our minimum standard. Yogi Bhajan always said to really learn something we must first read or experience something, then write it, then teach it. Passive learning is not enough, no matter how attentive we are. We need experience. Then we need to act on it. Writing is one form of action. Anything that helps our physical body to enact what we have learned and that tests our ability to use that experience in diverse circumstances will deepen our practical knowledge. Even with this accomplished, still we need to teach. In teaching, we shift perspectives. We reformulate our experience, discover significance, recognize meaning and learn to translate our personal experience to others. THIS HOME STUDY GUIDE HAS SEVERAL PARTS TO IT. Each one is designed to help you deepen and embody your experience and build your caliber as a Teacher and as a sensory human.


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THE MASTER'S TOUCH: WORKING WITH THE VIDEOS In each course we use videos of Yogi Bhajan teaching. Nothing can replace or substitute the direct experience of the Master's touch. Fortunately, we have many examples of his unique style and consciousness as a Teacher. If we engage in the classes with him we are transformed, consciously and subconsciously, by his insight and energy. We need to stay with that experience and distill it in terms that we can understand and use for ourselves. Listening to his class repeatedly reveals new insights, confirms things we know and shifts our attention to points we overlooked the first time. In this guide, we have included extensive excerpts from the video classes. There are also excerpts from other classes that directly relate to and elaborate points from the main class. At the end of each excerpt, there are study questions, exercises and projects. These are designed to help you reflect on, process and personalize what you learned in the class and through the videos. Engaging with the Master Read through the transcript of the video and then complete the study questions. Then, view the video—more than once if you can. Listen and be with it. Do not listen with the study questions in mind or any other agenda. Just be open. Let it call your attention to what you need to learn most. Then go back and read the transcript again and review the questions once more. Are you relating to the questions differently now, after seeing the video more than once—and on your own? What new insights or meanings came to you with this second viewing? Can you identify the nuances and changes in your relationship to him one-on-one versus with the group? Questions and Projects The questions serve to identify key concepts and terms as well as to help you reflect on how the principles you are learning relate to you and to concepts throughout the Transformation training. They also focus on how you can apply what you learn. The projects and exercises ask you to try experiments or to explore applications of what you learned with others or in

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new situations. If your trainer has established study groups, you can create some projects and explorations among yourselves that use the unique talent of your group and the cultural environments you are in. Answer all the questions in writing. When you do the journaling exploration, include the results of your projects and experiments. MENTORS AND MENTORING Mentors are teachers who engage you in authentic conversations and dialogue to help you assess and reflect on your personal transformation as you go through all the Transformation training modules. The minimum time period for taking all five modules is two years. During this time you continue teaching, refine your disciplines and apply the consciousness of a teacher to your community and professional associations. The mentor is not a “study buddy” or tutor. Their focus is on your process—not the direct content of the courses. The person you choose to be your mentor should be a teacher. Perhaps there is a senior teacher within your 3HO community who could serve in this capacity. Seek assistance from your trainers, if necessary. Your mentor should be someone who is knowledgeable, communicative and willing to give you support and neutral feedback to help you assess yourself. You may or may not like your mentor. It is more important that you respect and trust them. For some people it is difficult to accept positive assessment and praise. For others it is hard to accept feedback that contradicts their own impressions. A mentor should ask those challenging questions that help you look at all aspects of your growth and progress. One purpose of this relationship is to develop your capacity for self-reflection and meta-cognition (the ability to perceive your own perception). The questions from your mentor should become a working part of your own sensory self. Individuals who work with you as a mentor should adhere to a strict code of ethics; they are there to help you without any personal agenda of their own or to advance their status or finances. The mentoring relationship should be transparent and there to serve you and your Transformation process.



Your trainer is a teacher. He or she may also act as a mentor. To use a mentor well, arrange a regular check-in at certain points of your study or periodically, every 4 to 6 weeks. This way you can note your progress, your growth areas and your patterns.

MEDITATION: YOUR COMMITMENT TO TRANSFORMATION After each module, you should practice a 40- to 90-day sadhana with one of the meditation techniques given during the training. This develops your capacity as a sensory human, masters a meditation, and creates continuity with your intention from the course. Nothing works better than a disciplined practice. You may choose it independently or there may be a selection process by the trainers for your course. Throughout your 40- or 90-day meditation, you will be asked to keep a journal. The insights and experiences of yourself and others that accompany you in the meditation practice are rich sources for exploring your relationship to the teachings, Yogi Bhajan as a Master, and yourself as a Teacher. Besides cultivating your skills using a meditation over time, you may also do an intensive meditation. Some of you have done 2-1/2 hour meditations, others may not have had the opportunity. Take an appropriate meditation and do it for 21/2 hours either individually or in a group. Some groups have even committed to 2-1/2 hours a day for 40 days! Regular meditation, as in sadhana, and intensive meditation are central to this study. To read everything, understand it and do the class exercises are not enough. The goal is to master yourself as well as the material. For that you must refine your sensitivity and your relationship to you—in consciousness. You must have a crystallized habit to process your subconscious and conscious flow of thoughts and feelings and penetrate through the still point of shuniya into your intuition and being. Meditation nurtures that development. Mentoring, feedback from your teachers, and testing yourself through teaching and action are the other hand of the process.


TEACHING AND SERVICE We have no specific requirements for these two areas. You will be teaching according to your intention and to accumulate hours of experience. Work with your trainers for guidance on this. During Transformation it is important to stay open. There is a tendency in the ego to feel it has accomplished something. Once that happens the impulse is to isolate and insulate from other teachers, students and sources of assessment and feedback. Resist this tendency if it arises. Attend classes with other teachers. Co-teach. Be with and share with everyone, not just the group you like, or that agrees with you or your style. Cultivate the spiritual availability of a true Teacher by consciously observing your mind's tendencies. Act from the consciousness that God is the doer, that guru is the seer, not just you. Service can be through the act of teaching. Or, service can look like finding ways to support and awaken individuals and communities. There is a great need for the touch of compassion, the courage of contribution, the creativity to initiate projects and the love infused by conscious communication. Some groups have organized a day of service or a project in a community. Be inventive and find a natural expression of the consciousness that teaches through you and the Golden Chain. Additional Resources You may find additional resources that deepen your study. The resource can be people who represent expertise or applications of the area you want to master. It can be articles, books, web pages and more. This course and guide are focused on the core teaching of Yogi Bhajan. They provide a framework for viewing all the other areas of study that may interest you. The clarity and self-awareness that comes from the practice of Kundalini Yoga and meditation are essential when researching the vast creative flow of information and ideas now at our fingertips. But no amount of knowledge or facts or intellectual prowess brings us wisdom. Begin with wisdom and then use the resources you find intelligently to serve your consciousness and your identity as a Teacher.


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Many of the themes that Yogi Bhajan illuminates are perennial. Many of the techniques are uniquely shared by him as a legacy to us all. As you participate in his classes and study his teaching you will notice that he has a distinctive approach. He defined it as a teacher chipping away at your ego. He confronts, up-ends you, opens your mind, plants a seed, and asks each of us to gain our own experience of the Infinite as a natural step in blooming as a fearless, compassionate and intelligent human beings. Keep this beacon of consciousness in your heart and research the whole world as a mirror to yourself. There are many sources for Yogi Bhajan's teachings, including the KRI and 3HO websites, and links provided on the support website for Transformation: Teacher Training Level 2.

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A PROCESS MAP This diagram shows the relationship between our Transformation course work, your experiences teaching and in sadhana, and the greater community of service, IKYTA and 3HO. All these parts work together, but sadhana is at the heart of the process.



CHAPTER ONE

Mind, meditation, & consciousness



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BREAK THE MIND’S HYPNOTIC TRANCE An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

October 31, 1994 SO, WE ARE TRYING TO QUALIFY OURSELVES. Do you understand that everyday you exist you try to qualify yourself? Without any deep understanding or rational behavior, you have to qualify yourself everyday in existence. That’s why there are many teachers and many students and many ideas and many ways of life; because each person has to emotionally qualify himself or herself. Nobody tries to consciously qualify themselves. As long as the world deals with emotions and feelings, the path of life will be difficult. We as a human race cannot accept our higher values because they are too challenging; and those challenging values put us on a system, a personal, rational, logical system. It’s not that we are born weak or we are weak—that’s not true; nobody is weak and nobody is born weak. Try to understand, every human has one constitutional unity, the Self, and that is why everybody is born with a soul, with a consciousness, with emotions,


with feelings, with thoughts. Everyone is given the same, but people cannot accept their higher Self. When you cannot accept something which is real, which is you, then you have to accept the alternative and the alternative must help to support you to qualify yourself. That’s why people wear makeup. Why do they wear makeup? They have to make up for something which they are not; they think this is how they should look. When you put on makeup you are not yourself, you are making up for yourself. It’s not that a stick of lipstick and hairstyle and all that means anything; it’s a question of consciousness. It’s a fight within humanity. You are known by your profession, your designation; you are known by your wealth, your political power. No human being shall be known as a human being in this lifetime. No human being will find himself and herself in their lifetime—and that is the real purpose of life.


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It’s a very funny story—I will explain it to you: once a very great, wise man came to meet another wise man. So they were sitting and they were talking about things which are supposed to be talked about, and all of a sudden, this man who was visiting said, “Have you found God?” The other replied, “No.” He said, “You have been so many years in all this meditation and work and all this kind of thing, why have you not found God so far?” He said, “I don’t want to waste my time.” He said, “Finding God is a waste of time?” He said, “Yes.” He said, “Why?” He said, “I don’t have to qualify myself that I have found God.” “So what are you living for?” He said, “Why don’t you go and ask God whether He has found me or not; I am not finding God. It’s not my prerogative, I am not finding anything, I am not even finding myself, I am not qualifying myself.” And the other man said, “Why?” He said, “I am what I am. I have nothing to qualify for, nothing to find, nothing to go to.” Do you understand the mental capacity and the happiness and ecstasy of a man who is just what he is? Have you any idea? But, if that’s the only thing and that’s the real thing, that’s all it is—then there will be no libraries and no books and no profession left—nothing. People will come; people will live; people will die; that’s it—yeah. Without emotion there would be no nuisance. So nuisance is needed; and then sense is needed to cover the nuisance. First you create nuisance; then you make sense to cover the nuisance; and then you find that the sense you used to cover the nuisance is nuisance; then you make more sense to cover more nuisance; and this is the way you go. One day you sit back and you say, “Well, you know, I am eighty years old and I have looked, I have lived.” That’s all you can say. Eighty years you may live—whatever fun you think you wanted and didn’t have, you would not have sought anyway, so why are you hassling over it? That’s the freaky nature of every human being. Stupid as you all are from birth to death because why? Because you don’t trust God. God has nothing

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to do with your dictionary, your vocabulary, your thought, your form. Because God has nothing to perform, you have nothing to do with God. Because of your ego, all you do is qualify yourself emotionally and personally. Amazing, the day will come when you will be, with all the emotional qualifying success, and you can only say one statement, “I have lived.” Which you would have lived anyway! So, the psychological, sociological, biological and personal rhythmical self is to create nuisance and then make sense to clean the nuisance and then find that you are clean in the nuisance—it’s a nuisance itself. That’s why there are so many teachings, so many teachers, so many systems, because so long as you live without God, you have to qualify yourself. There is no other way. Every religion is a justifying, qualifying sense of reality—it’s not a reality. Every human is a justified sense of self; it’s never a self. And it is from time immemorial to time immemorial that the human has lived this nuisance. It takes so much doing to become human and then it takes so much doing to blow it that there is no possibility of realizing that what we are doing is not right. And nobody wants to listen to this. In our life we have relationship: we are sensual, sexual, personal and impersonal, platonic, magnificent, magnetic, psyche, sense, relationships—seven chakras, seven relationships; but do we ever have a relationship—a relationship built on me to me? Never, not one. We are five billion people on the earth right now, not one person can claim ‘I have a relationship of myself with me’; that means, you know what that would mean? That would mean every molecule on this planet is myself. Me is myself and myself is the entire existence that ever was or is to be. I asked once a very, very great man—I had reverence for this man—after that I thought he was super stupid. But you know I was not that qualified to judge anything and I don’t want to judge anything. I asked him one day—we were just discussing—and I said, “What is God?” and he gave me the biggest bull which I know and hear everyday, you know, “It is the energy of the infinity of the infinity,” and I heard myself say to him, I said, “Well, this I teach the Americans, you know. They are—they don’t know anything. You have to keep them going and this is how you talk to these guys; but you can’t talk to me like that.” I said, “What is this? You think that

• KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING MANUAL LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION STUDY GUIDE



because I have gone to America I am supposed to hear this nonsense from you? No! That’s not the question.” He said, “No, but Yogi Ji, it is Maha Adi Shakti.” I said, “Swami Ji, I know that; this is a ridiculous situation. You know when I started writing English I had four lines and I would draw A and B and C and D and then those lines disappeared; and then one line and then no line. And now I don’t even raise my pen— tititititi—it is for somebody to read what nonsense? Have you ever seen a person who writes shorthand? Does she write any difference between A, P, Q, Y? I mean there is nothing—tirrrrr—that’s it.” I said, “We are two mature people; what do you think God is?” After a while he stared saying, “Actually you took away my question; I was going to ask you the same question.” I said, “That’s too much! No, no, no, just tell me what is God.” He said, “Now you have put me on the spot but you will explain to me it.” And I said, “Okay I will explain. What do you say?” He said, “Out of all that nothing there is, that nothing there is, that is God.” And I said, “In 1972, I gave a lecture in New York, you took those lines from there and don’t lay it back on me. That’s not right.” He said, “Then let’s qualify to ourselves what God is.” And we both spoke at the same time: all there is and there is not happens to be called God. It happened to be called God because man has a unique nature to create a creative sense of infinity. But that infinity cannot be realized if you do not know the nonexistence, which you are not qualified to understand. You can understand existence. You are all you are, what I see in you, through existence. You are what all that nonexistence is, but I feel that nonexistence is part of existence. You are beyond that what it is, but still, forgive me, I praise you and pray for you and pray through you. Why? Why do I do that? Because me, within myself, is existence; I can never forget it. Though the nonexistence creates the existence, my experience cannot qualify it; therefore I have to have a title. This is a very simple thing that ‘Guru bina nai chela,’ without Guru there is no disciple; ‘chela bina nai mela,’ without disciple there is no festivity; ‘mela bina nai tela,’ without festivity there is no money. So, these are rational things; the world is a


rational coexistence and that’s how this universe is. It’s a rational coexistence. It’s a rational coexistence exploited irrationally. Now that hurts, but you all do it—you are all exploiters of irrational existence, though it exists rationally. That’s why we collect wealth, we collect money, we collect things; we have everything we want. Our want comes because in us there is a brute, an animal and because of that animal we are irrational, illogical, without harmony. We do not have the power of surrender. We have been taught surrender is a weakness, it’s a coward’s act. Now believe me or not—if spermatozoa does not surrender into the egg you would never have existed. Basically all life is created out of death, all existence is created of nonexistence. So I thought tonight we will just talk about nonexistence and carry it, because the seventh chakra, sahasrara, has the capacity within the human existence to give a little bit of that taste. So can we do that all right? That was my intention, my very positive intention, that we would take the class to that kind of atmosphere. Now—how many of you have heard the word hypnosis? How many of you have experienced hypnosis? Oh, okay, it’s very easy, you wanted to know—you have all lied. We have all lived in a state of hypnosis. Are you with me? Because once you live in a real self and break through hypnosis, you are God. Do you know that? God is not what you think God is—God is when you live outside a state of hypnosis in your real Self. It’s very funny, once in India I was lecturing. Later on my college friend came, he said, “Where did you learn all this wisdom? You used to be dumb, silent, football player. What the hell are you talking about?” I said, “Nothing I am just playing football, that’s all. I used to play football and now I am playing football with God—same football, there is no big deal.” He said, “God, I am convinced you are very wise.” I said, “Thank you.” (Students laugh.)

I said, “Don’t forget, I was your captain.” (Students laugh.) (Yogi Bhajan laughs.)

So it is a qualifying factor. We are all, in one way or the other, in a state of hypnosis and the tragedy is when the hypnosis becomes neurosis. Hey, hey! Are you with me? Then


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your trouble starts. As long as you are in hypnosis you are fine; but when it becomes neurosis you are super stupid raised to the square of one thousand per second. Then you are too terrible, too bad. You become very cheap; and it’s that cheapness which is called suffering. And that is not going to work in the Age of Aquarius, so before we all vanish as a race—Piscean race—let’s pull ourselves out of the Piscean self. Let’s break the Piscean hypnotic trance. MEDITATION: BREAKING THE PISCEAN HYPNOTIC TRANCE [See the end of the transcript for a complete write-up.]

What is Piscean? “Learn, I want to learn, I want to learn.” Isn’t that all you know? This I am going to learn right—I want to learn. Aquarian is—I just want to be. See the difference? There’s a difference in feeling: I want to be. I want to learn. What do I have to learn? What can learning do for you? It takes you deeper into hypnosis, to neurosis, to psychosis— that’s what it’s going to do to you. Finish you, forever? Just to be. Just a feeling—quick left right, left right, rhythm it. Now, if the rhythm, the motor system in the brain, betrays you. Come on try this, this, this will break your self-hypnosis. Can you believe it? You have done this before; no, not like this, it’s just like this— um, um, um, um, um, um, um—conscious. Move your index finger consciously and you will go berserk in exactly three minutes. (Students laugh.)

Oh yeah! Because you live in an aroma of hypnosis! You are very hypnotic. You all the time move not as a human, you just move in the trend of being human. You just take it, take it. It’s a Halloween—you know, bring your ghost house. Like this, um, um, um, um—why can’t you do it? It’s very simple. You do this (this won’t work) then you are with a flow. This is beyond you; this is conscious, very aware, awakened thing. It’s not the body that is doing it. It’s not an automated assembly line, like cars or fast food. Do it with awareness. Move those two fingers very consciously. Be aware that you are moving. Exercise your awareness and it will conflict your hypnotic state. Isn’t funny, because within three minutes it starts telling you what nonsense you are doing. It starts talking to you. (Students laugh.)

It’s not that it’s . . .

It’s amazing what this little exercise can do to you. It will ask you what are you doing, what is the purpose of it, and why you are doing it the way you are doing it. The moment you apply consciousness, a question starts arising. Right there. And then it will start beating you at your own game. And if you don’t listen to that negative self and keep doing it and keep breaking it, you will start breaking the walls. You will come out of it. Steady, steady, steady. Move that hand steadily, consciously, with a conscious jerk, so that it can break. You get into hypnosis, a higher trance form, into a deeper trance where you cannot feel pain and pleasure where you see everything and all distances disappear. But that’s how life is, when all distance disappears and you become very much in it—in common man language, it’s called love—but mind you, it is hypnosis. Love is not a power of disappearance; love is a power of appearance. Move, move, move. Yeah you should be miserable now if you are moving it right. There is no (pause) this is absolutely exact, doesn’t matter who you are. After three minutes it is an uphill battle. It is miserable! And the more you do it, the more miserable you are, and the more miserable you are, you will enjoy it because you will start questioning yourself. It’s a very—I do not know why they teach self-realization in any other way. They should put people like this before a wall and let them do it the whole day. By the evening everybody will be self-realized. In your life you have to break this hypnotic state of selfego. You have to in order to see the glimpse of the creativity of Almighty God, who is nothing. You want to see everything. Nobody wants to see nothing. Do you know that? Yeah, yeah, you will do it. Strictly, consciously and with a jerk like an electric shock, so that it can give you control on the hypothalamus—not the automatic power. Normally the hypothalamus takes over and everything becomes automatic. That’s ridiculous, now put your eyes, because you have done exactly five minutes, at the tip of your nose and then hold yourself. Don’t misunderstand, Salk Institute found a medicine for polio. This is miraculous, too. Any nervous disorder you can conquer by this exercise. Look at the tip of your nose please and do it consciously. I want you to go home enriched with something; don’t just come to the class and learn something. No, come to class to be something. Don’t come here to learn with me. There are so many people who teach you to learn things. See

(Yogi Bhajan laughs.)

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the difference—here you have to be not to learn. Learning, go somewhere else. Move, move, move, don’t give in. Don’t worry. One more minute. Consciously, it will take you away. It will take you to a state of relaxation. You will like to sleep; don’t do that—just be conscious, conscious. Break it, break it, break it! You have the right to break this damn spell. Now with each hand you will say, Thou, Thou, Thou Students: Thou, thou, thou, thou…. Yogi Bhajan: Close your eyes, absolutely go silent, absolutely. In your body, no movement, nothing. Still your body, like a rock, absolutely still, complete stillness, no thoughts, no movement, and nonexistence. Practice nonexistence. Practice. It is in English; practice nonexistence. You have a bad habit of self-hypnosis, so use those bad habits to make good results. Practice nonexistence. All your life you are yelling and screaming and impressing and telling to whole world I am, I am; now, just say I am not. Just for a change. Bring yourself into state of total forgiveness and forgetfulness, forgiveness and forgetfulness, nonexistence. You always want something; this moment you want nothing. Just don’t want. For a few minutes, just don’t exist. Forgive yourself and forget yourself. If we do not forgive ourselves or forget ourselves, we cannot forgive anybody and forget anybody. We remain in a very imbalanced stage. If we cannot non-exist, we cannot also exist, because they are two sides of the coin. You have been taught very fundamentally wrong things. You have been always taught to exist, to be— this way, that way. Whereas life has to end in nonexistence, remember that the end of this existence is nonexistence. Uh-huh. Disappear from yourself. For a moment, forget who you are. Correct. Inhale deep and stretch your hand up straight and stretch God. Your whole spine—stretch it, as much as much you can. Stretch, stretch, stretch, I said. Exhale, inhale deep. Stretch high and take a twist toward the left—stretch, stretch, stretch. Come forward and exhale. Inhale deep. Take a turn to the right. Right turn, stretch, turn stretch, turn stretch, turn stretch. Come forward and relax. We have done a job—that’s it. Hello. You have been fundamentally ill-educated, taught bad manners and you have been made to believe to act anti-God. Because you must understand, it is the nonexistence which is the source of existence. So all you have been taught: to exist, to exist, to exist, to exist, even to the extent of grab this, grab


this, kill this, kill this, get this, get this and exist. If the whole world dies, you must exist. What a terrible lesson. When life is a balance, every existence must have equal nonexistence, every beauty has equal ugliness, every good manner has crudeness hidden in it, right there. Try to understand life. The moment life is taken on one side, extended to one side, it becomes hollow, shallow and empty; that’s not the way to go. You must know worst before you know best; and if you are anybody, then you must know best and worst at the same time. Pair of opposites must not affect you. You know it was unfortunate, the last three days, I was communicating with a living master, a Yogi, and he said, “I want to resign, I want to resign, I want to admit, I want to do everything; whatever they are telling me—admit, admit.” I said, “What you are admitting? What are you talking about?” “Oh, I want to be the first Guru who can say, ‘I have missed the preparation and I have done this and I have done wrong.’” I said, “Yeah, you are only thinking about that one percent wrong not ninety-nine percent right, right?” He said, “I just want to leave these Westerners forever.” I said, “Where are you going?” He said, “Puerto Rico.” (Yogi Bhajan laughs.)

I cracked up, I said, “That is still the United States.” “You are not going anywhere.” And I said, “You came in this country to teach people what a Guru is. Aren’t you called Guru Dev?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “That means the personified light that brings out of the darkness, that’s what you really are.” “No, no, no, no they have liked me thus, they have liked me thus. I want to go and tell them—and just exactly what you say—thank you very much, goodbye.” I said, “How will that make a difference?” “No, I want to admit.” I said, “Eighty million Catholics admit everyday! It has made no difference for the last two centuries. Two thousand years are going to go. They admit everyday: Father, Holy Father, I have sinned, I have sinned, I have sinned. I mean, nothing works.” I said, “Your admission will do nothing, it is just that you


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are angry. Neither denial nor admission will do a thing.” “What should I do?” I said, “Bless them.” That’s the job of a teacher, a job is to bless. Those who serve you, bless them; those who allege you, bless them; those who curse you, bless them; those who are sweet to you, bless them. Job of a teacher is to bless. Karam Kar phal kee yachana na kar. Call of duty must be done, neither admit nor disagree; bless because neither denial can do anything nor admission can do anything. “No, I have got to give them a chance.” I said, “Give a chance, giving is forgiving. You know the English word for giving?” For the sake of giving is called forgiving—from the heart not from the head, not from the anger. Those who cannot forgive themselves and forget themselves, they shall never exist. That’s the law of nature. Those who shall never surrender will never rise. A seed has to go in the ground, surrender itself with the dirt; grow up as a plant and carry so many seeds in the fruits. I understand today also that Swami Satchitananda is not feeling good, so all these old captains are leaving the ship and the most beautiful man of all men, the very beloved of God, that singing rabbi, Schlomo Carlbach, he disappeared. Son of a gun, he just left without even saying hello or goodbye. I was so mad at him. He brought newness and heart to Judaism. He brought songs, he brought singing, he brought dancing, he told stories. He was great. Very popular. So whatever life is—it has a question in it. The answer is the old has to go to become young and young has to go to become old and that’s the process of life. I think we will meet again when? Students: Tomorrow. Yogi Bhajan: Oh yeah, yeah, oh I was compensating for my not being with you, so we will meet tomorrow again and I will teach you trance and hypnosis. That’s the course I have to complete or forget. I just made it up that day that I, I never wanted to do it, but I thought because I have not taught you for a long time (pause) so I will be with you this week and I will teach as many of you that come. Don’t feel miserable about leave your appointments and night and all that kind of stuff, but if you feel you can spare time, we will go into the self-breaking, self-hypnosis everyday. Slowly, by time, we can’t

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do this in one stroke. It will be a continuous class, whether you come or you don’t, and then I will go to New Mexico. Thank you very much for prayers and sharing my pain, it was the most neurotic nonsense treatment I ever had medically in my whole life. (Yogi Bhajan laughs.)

If I had known this is what it meant, I would not have come near it. But anyway I feel comfortable now, little bit. So the caravan moves on and the winds bring the morning message and the dew tells the night is on his way out and the travelers look to the journey through the bright burning sun to the sand dunes till another moon comes and comforts for the night. I just made it up. (Students laugh.)

May the Long Time Sun Shine upon you All love surround you, And the pure light within you Guide your way on. Bless us, bless us, bless us, oh the blessed self within self, bless us for the virtues, for the values, give us all into the self so we can feel Thee, Sat Nam.



a

KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION BREAKING THE PISCEAN HYPNOTIC TRANCE Yogi Bhajan • October 31, 1994

POSTURE:

Sit in a comfortable, meditative posture.

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MUDRA:

Bring your hands into fists with the thumb over the middle finger; place them in front of the chest about six inches apart. Point your Jupiter finger up to the sky. 1. Begin moving the hands alternately, in a precise way, forward and back, in a mechanical, slow, almost jerky, motion—with a steady, even cadence. Do it with full awareness. 6 Minutes.

2. Continue the movement of the hands and bring the eyes to the tip of the nose. 3 Minutes. 3. Continue the movement and begin chanting “Thou” with each movement of the hands. 4 Minutes. 4. Close the eyes. Still the hands and relax them down. Come to absolute silence and stillness. Practice nonexistence. For a moment forget who you are. 6 minutes.

2

TO END:

Inhale deep and stretch the arms up. Exhale. Inhale deep and twist to the left. Stretch. Exhale in the center. Inhale deep and twist to the right. Stretch. Exhale in the center and relax. Breathing through the mouth will relax you very fast. It is a very vital exercise.

EFFECTS:



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Chapter One Study questions & Projects

1. Why does it seem so difficult for the mind to support you in being you—just you? As Yogi Bhajan tells us in this lecture, there is an ecstasy that comes and resides in our heart when we are able to be who we really are, to be real. So what property of the mind repeatedly traps us and leads us toward false masks and the entanglements of emotions and commotions? Exercise: Write down some examples of situations in your life where you feel you became entangled in the mask instead of expressing who you actually are. Take a minute or two to meditate. Guide your mind into a state of presence, stillness and alertness. Open up to your feelings and accept yourself exactly as you are, accept the situation and accept your role at this moment in time. Now step back and re-see that situation; stay in the moment, with your senses alerted and with the confident presence of your consciousness. If you had been able to drop the mask and be present in the moment, how would your observations have changed; what would you have noticed? How would you have acted differently? After you work through each of the situations that you chose, share your observations with your study group. Notice that each situation induces a kind of forgetfulness as emotions and the subconscious focus your attention and senses. The first choice we must make is to be mindful and present.

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2. In this lecture, Yogi Bhajan says: “Every human is a justified sense of self; it's never a self.” With this statement, he gives us the criterion to be considered a full self-sensory human being in our life. We are all born, live and die. To live takes no effort; just as having a self takes no effort; these are gifts. But for the yogi, to be fully human means living consciously, qualifying our sense of self within ourselves, and delivering that sense of self and our virtues in each of our actions. This precious opportunity of a human life is not to be used just to exist, but to live fully, consciously, compassionately and prosperously. Consider what this actually means for you personally. Share your feelings and thoughts with your study group or study partner. Exercise: Find a place to sit, where there is a lot of activity or where many things of interest surround you. Enter into a meditative mind and be still. Sense everything around you. After you stabilize your meditative state, pick out something interesting and pay attention to only it. Choose a person, or an interesting conversation, or a fascinating plant or object to give your focus to. Meditate on your choice for three or four minutes. Then take a slow deep breath and allow the entire environment to flood back into your senses. Notice what happens to your mind and the feelings moving through your body and awareness. What happens as you focus your mind and allow it to hypnotize itself into the sensations of the object of your choice? What happens to your awareness of all the other activities in the environment?


MIND & MEDTIATION • STUDY GUIDE

How would you describe the sensation of slipping into and out of your state of concentration? Let yourself go with the mind into the experience. Repeat the process while maintaining a neutral observer position; allow the mind to hypnotize itself into something. Note how the mind’s focus can move separately from your consciousness. Discuss the stages in the sensations of this process with your study group. Besides the classical stages that you move through—pratyahar to dharana—what natural stages of feeling and attention did you experience, in your own words? What does this experience tell you about how our minds usually work and what our normal consciousness is in our day-to-day lives?


3. Exercise: Write a paragraph that describes the essence of the process that lets you break the hypnosis of everyday life and the hypnosis of the Piscean Age. Describe an example or experience that you can share with others that clarifies this sensation of breaking the hypnosis.


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CHAPTER TWO

Awakening intuition: synchronize Your brain & your mind



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Awaken your dormant human consciousness An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

March 8, 1995 WE STARTED, YESTERDAY, A CLASS ON SELF. It was the first class in which we looked at self-hypnosis. We have been taught in the West that we can learn enlightenment. It’s just as if one day, perhaps, we’ll switch on a bulb and we will have light. We do not understand that the most powerful thing in a human is consciousness. We don’t have the power of commitment if we do not have consciousness. We don’t have the power of conception if we do not have consciousness. We don’t have the power of deliverance if we do not have consciousness. When we do not have consciousness, we do not have basic intuition. Now, the problem is that the intuition has to be developed. It is there, but it’s dormant. Everybody is not intuitive. You can be intuitive, but you are not. That’s why they say the soul is dormant. The dormant soul means that you are alive, but you live by impulse. So what is the difference between you and an animal? An animal lives by impulse also. An animal is impulsive. When to an animal 22


comes food, then for the animal, it is food. Stretch, then for the animal, it is a stretch. Yawn, then for the animal, it’s a yawn and it gets up in the morning. Everything to an animal is impulse and that impulse guides the animal. So we have three parts: We are beast, which is animal; we are human, which is a rare one of us; and we are angel, which is the real one of us, which we never (or sometimes) reach. How many people are there among us who can give and forgive and never lie when it comes to giving? Search your hearts. No, I am not asking you to confirm with me—your own heart you have to know. If somebody comes and says, “Hey, I need this.” And you have it but you won’t give it, and you say, “I am tight these days. . . It’s not possible.” If you have a hundred thousand dollars, somebody else does not have that hundred thousand dollars. So, you have that hundred thousand dollars but somebody else doesn’t have it; if you have a million dollars, somebody doesn’t have that mil© 2006 Kundalini Research Institute


lion dollars. So matter and energy is a matter of exchange, it is not a matter of authority. Simply you hold it. That’s all it is. And the more energy you hold, in case of money or matter, (money is a medium) that’s the amount of insecurity you have. Have you seen an animal holding stockpile of money? They don’t know, because they live only by impulse. When a she-dog is horny, she is horny. The whole town knows that she-dog is horny. There is nothing you can do to stop it. Here we are all the time—horny or not horny at all. We use the impulse of sex to control our relationship. And that’s why we have married, we have divorced; we are divorced, we are married. That’s the curse of the modern age. Because we use sexual intercourse and sexual relationships to control, we are made insensitive by this control system. Conscious control. We are dishonest. I was asking somebody today, “Hey, why did you get married?” He said, “Oh, it was her idea.” I said, “Why did you get divorced?” “Oh, it was her idea.” I said, “You got married, her idea; you got divorced, it was her idea; but was there some idea of yours?” He said, “No. I never wanted to get married.” “Then why did you get married?” “Oh, she wanted it.” “Why did you get divorced?” “She wanted it.” “But what do you want?” “I don’t know, I never wanted to get married.” Very undeveloped sense of relationship—you have a very undeveloped sense of relationship. So, the fact is you are married or you are divorced or you are unmarried; three stages can happen, right? You have no sense of relationship because your sense of relationship is by impulse. And your relationships are based in sensual control. I mean to say, is there anything more stupid than this? Have you any idea that how sick you people are? I mean just (pause) just think of that. Because you, to start with, you are never real to each other. Not at all, you are emotional, impulsive, relative. You are? Emotional, impulsive, relative. That’s called I, I, I! That’s all you are. And if either the emotions are gone or the impulse is gone, you are gone. So what happens? There are children involved. And what happens to those children? Angry bugs. Have you seen those children? They are angry—like in hell. Fangs. Aggh!


They look at the earth like this. Aggh! Why? They think they have been betrayed. And generation after generation we produce these angry children. And then we blame the society for crime. One of my staff members went to participate in a festivity. Wanted to go, I said, “Just go, go, it’s fine.” Day and a half later came; that was the point, too. It didn’t hurt me. Since then, the person is so religious and so humble and so sweet, and I looked around and I said, “What happened?” “Oh, they were all animals.” I said, “What do you mean they were all animals? We are all animals.” “No, no, no, no. They have gone animal.” Don’t forget. We all have in us that animal; we are supposed to get out of that animal. I don’t blame people when they drink, when they take drugs, when they smoke, all that is because they have no self-control. Self-impulse. All habits which bring outside poison into your system, or any stimulation, any stimulation of any sort, is because of the indiscipline, because you have no control on your impulse. And when you don’t control your impulse you have no intuition. And when you have no intuition, you are not human. You are a mammal which walks on two legs and looks like you. Sometime, sit down and talk to yourself. You will find the greatest difficulty in self-communication. Why do I do the things which I do? I was joking with somebody today, I said, “This is a good cake, you should eat.” “No, no, no, I have stopped eating cake.” I have?” Repeat it. Yogi Bhajan and Students: I have stopped eating cake. Yogi Bhajan: How difficult it is! Just watch when you are not eating cake. This person ate cake all their life, without knowing, until they reached a point where they couldn’t take it anymore. You always do things until you reach a point where you can’t do it anymore. That’s why your marriage is not a marriage, your life is not a life, your relationship is not a relationship; and you never asked this question, “Why is this happening to me?” You must live by intuition and by consciousness and not by commotion and by impulse. You are a human. Unfortunately, one day I sat in on a Festival of Consciousness, a New Age Festival of Consciousness. There were seven hundred therapies—seven hundred options avail-


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able in that festival to cater to a person’s impulse. So animal is being made a better animal. That’s all. So what is your impulse? You should have a better coat, like a horse, a shining coat. So, moisturizers, creams, and facelifts and whatever, whatever you do, like I was joking that day, I said, “Hum, how much money you spent?” “Two hundred eighty bucks to look like a natural blonde.” Two hundred and eighty dollars and three hours to look like a natural blonde, the person will look really ugly. And I said, “What is this all about?” “Oh, as if you have never gone to a salon.” And you laugh at it. You do not want to impose yourself. You don’t want to be impressive anymore. Why? Oh, there are thousands of artificial blondes so one has to live now natural blonde. You always want to look different. Fundamentally each one of you is different. You don’t have to look different. Just recognize you are different—that you are not willing to recognize. If you recognize you are different, you become lonely, you become insecure and you freak out. That’s how bad it is. Just tell you, “You are you.” Aha. You are scared, you scream, because you can’t accept you as you. So what do you do? Go to a psychologist, tell what your parents did wrong, blame them; what your boyfriend did wrong, blame him; what your girlfriend did wrong, blame her; all you find in society to spend money on to find excuses, where excuses are abuses. Selfabuses. You are never willing to become you. You refuse! Twenty-five years ago I came. When I started, I said, “It is always you which matters. Come with me and I’ll give you, or teach you, how to be you.” It became popular with some people, but it didn’t hit the road because fundamentally you are afraid to be you. You always want to be somebody else. If you are not you, what else can help you? Just give yourself a break. So, yesterday we tried self-hypnosis for intuition. And today is the second class and that is how, gradually, we are little–by–little teaching you to experience you. Little–by–little. I am not saying that because these are the classes we can’t push you to a hilt in one day, overnight. We could say, “Okay, okay, close your eyes, now watch your wings coming out of your arms.” No, there is no such thing. It is a process of learning, gradually, slowly. You are Western. You are window-shoppers. You go. I go to the restaurant to eat; many people come

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and they read the menu first, they want to know what is going to be available inside. They are not hungry; they are just looking for something to eat. You are looking for some satisfaction. You don’t think that you have satisfaction inside. Therefore you have to look outside for satisfaction. And unfortunately, outside of you there is no satisfaction. You can waste money, time and your life. Nothing exists outside you. If that is not true, when you are dead, what happens? Where are your thoughts? Where is your wealth? Where are your games? What happens to you? Have you any idea? It’s done, over with, you are finished. And you have no control over it. Hmmm. And that’s it? Therefore on one side is Maya, Maya is me. And mission is Thou. Mission is when me humbles itself and serves others. That’s Thou. When I consciously humble myself and serve others, that’s Thou. If you cannot see God in all, you cannot see God at all. Whether you are a black person or you are white person or you are a redneck or you are this or that, the color of the blood in your veins and your arteries is the same. The only difference in you is your thinking because you can never think as you. “Oh I am British.” Then what? There is a little island somewhere that makes you British or this makes you American or that makes you Canadian? So you always try to bifurcate and identify yourself with something else. Never that you are one big human race created by a Creator to experience intuition and consciousness. And for centuries you have been asked not to practice—any practice which teaches you intuition. Because then you become stronger than the teacher and every student of today has to be ten times better than their teacher, tomorrow. That’s the principle of life. And it cannot be denied. It has been denied all these centuries. Therefore man is totally wrapped up into Maya. One day a lady died, she left everything to her butler. Now, they say, butler is no good. When she was alive, butler was good. Now she is dead, butler is no good. Now everybody else is good but that butler. When she was alive, there was only one person—that was that butler. Because everybody wants to have what they don’t have, the fight is always between the haves and have-nots, fight is never between two persons. Fight is not between two individuals. Fight is between those who have and those who don’t. Those who have, there are others who don’t. Those who don’t have, they will never try to earn a process of intuition and consciousness



they can have. No, they will like to grab what somebody else has. And when you wear somebody’s shell, it doesn’t fit you. And that is where the trouble begins. There is an old saying, somebody else’s coat will never fit you. You hear that many times. So this is an intuitive world in which we are supposed to live as a human and practice. I am going to teach you twice a week; only with the idea that you can go home and practice what I taught yesterday and what I am going to teach today. Simple exercises. They are not very heavy ones, but they are good ones. They are steps to grow human. Human is a qualified individual who has dormant intuition and regulatory consciousness and you need both so that you can match up to the challenge.

MEDITATION: SELF-HYPNOSIS TO DEVELOP INTUITION [See end of transcript for complete write-up.]

So tonight, we’ll go into a posture as we did yesterday, we did like this. Remember that? You remember that? We did like this? Now today, you do the same but you catch the Mercury and the? Student: (No response.) Yogi Bhajan (Demonstrating the fingers): Id, id, id, id. This is id. This is Jupiter; this is Saturn; this is Sun; this is Mercury. These are your inlets, antennas. That is why your hand is split. Now you do like this and sit like this, please. And close your eyes, and bring them to the tip of the nose and give a long life to yourself with a long breath, because you live by the breath of life. And relax and let it go. Breathe long and it’s (pause) it’s amazing what this simple thing can do. Simple effective thing can do. And you look! Your eyes are in the back of your skull and you look mentally behind it. Forget you have frontal eyes. Just understand your eyes in the back of your neck. Just look at your (pause) create the mental eye, not between your eyes and third eye and try to pretend to be great which you are not, but just that there are eyes in the back of your neck. And you have your Mercury, your id combined and your breath is long life, long life means long breath. Longer the breath, longer the life; shorter the breath, shorter the life. And you get lost. And we’ll give you simple music so that you can float with it. And you will do it very consciously. In this gradual step-by-step you will grow, so that


you may not spoil yourself by asking others. You may learn to ask yourself all the time. (Singh Kaur’s Guru Guru Wahe Guru is played) Yogi Bhajan: Your Self is the only God you can ask. Be

very relaxed. Where there is a tension or duality there is no divinity. Yogi Bhajan: This Saturday you have every healer here at this center. And they are inviting you to come between 2pm and 5pm. For twenty bucks you can get all this chiropractic, chronic healing, massage therapy, flower essence, Sat Nam Rasayan, gem stone healing, card reading, wow, and much more, more, more, more. That is cheap. There is going to be healing fair here. But right now, if you just relax, you are healing. And that can save you right now. Relax, but don’t fall apart. Be alert and exert. Alertness is the key to life. You cannot exert in life if you are not alert in life. They both go together. There is a 900 number in you, it’s called self-psyche. Sometime dial that, you dummies, instead of paying three dollars a minute, you can call your own number. Say 900–I, I the idiot, what do I say? What do I say about my idiotic-ness? And you will get answers you can’t believe. If you just sit and relax and call your own psyche inside and save yourself the bill. If you are very sexual and sensual and you call that number where the girl talks, you better call your own inside and close your eyes and see the stars, the moon, the sun, the space and then it’s far out. Whenever you mentally expand yourself you save yourself trouble. When you mentally contract yourself, you will trouble yourself. That’s how trouble is. Trouble is defined. You go vast, troubles become zero. You go in, troubles become big, you become small. Steady now. You are just on the borderline of the twilight zone. Your body will go through changes, the glandular system will start now merging differently. Your bloodstream will change, chemistry will change. The muscles will react. Just stay where you are and let it flow. Compute your psychic power now. I–the–self call upon my psyche; I–the–self, that’s the keyword to it, I–the–self call upon my psyche to come in and show me the Infinity of my Creator. Show me the future and find me the facts. That’s the basic function of intuition. That most wonderful, divine in you, I–the–self, call on my psyche, take me to the Infinity and show me the vastness of this creation. Body will go through the realm of changes now because your blood chemistry has changed and so has your


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aura. So basically you are not what you were before you sat down. So at this time self-control is very needed, very required, because handling the energy is a basic requirement; so please, be in self-control. Sit like great Buddhas and let the heavens walk in you. Where there is good fortune there are heavens. Fortune comes from heavens and earth is blessed with it, that’s how the relationship is. Too much earth and no heavens—that relationship doesn’t work. Don’t complain, don’t cry, be compassionate and caring right now and just control yourself, this is the moment of life which is asking for self-control. Keep the posture, let the Mercury come through. The space will open to you, the heavens will open to you, that’s the beauty of the Mercury—Celestial Communication. That’s how the Lord of Miracles, Guru Ram Das, helps those who meditate on him, with that angelic power to come through, things which cannot be explained, things which are beyond human. Let the breath be longer so that you can live longer, healthier, richer. If you take a long breath and you can control your breathing to five breaths a minute, you can never be poor, period. Normally you breathe fifteen times a minute and when you are upset you breathe sometimes twenty-five breaths a minute. You are crossing the twilight zone of the pain into the zone of space that means humongous insecurity. Just be you and start floating. The one who created you is with you. You are not alone. You and your Creator and your consciousness have to now lock in. I said, lock in. Clamp it. You, your Creator and your consciousness—lock in now. It’s a priceless experience. See the planet earth as you are standing on the moon. Mercury–moon–communication. Sustain yourself in this zone for another couple of minutes, that’s all you can do. (Niranjan I am watching you, and you must meditate. Good girl. I know you are hiding behind your mom, but that doesn’t make any difference. I can see through, you know what I mean? If you won’t meditate you won’t go skiing, you know. So let’s make a deal. You do it right.) Longer the breath, longer the life—more opportunities, good luck. Inhale deep, put your both hands on the chest please and press hard, as hard as you can, hold the breath and press hard. Hard, actually hard! Breathe out, now please breathe in again, deep! Put both your hands at your navel point and press really hard. Hard, hard! Your hands must come through. Breathe out, now fold your hands in the cen26


ter, please, and breathe in, and put all the pressure together to neutralize energy into the entire being, this is the most important part. Let it disseminate into all fibers right from here. And you relax. Good. It’s all right. Well, we’ll go through the forty steps of it slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. It’s unfortunate that it’s not like an old school that a person comes and learns one lesson and goes through the eight weeks of it and then tests it out and is then given a second lesson, like that. Here, if we cannot have best, we make best of what we have. But, you must understand, if your eyes cannot see in the back of your neck, you are not covered. First step of intuition: if you cannot see the unseen, you cannot know the Unknown, you cannot talk the unutterable, you are not a human. But nobody has told you that way, you have the vote, you are going to elect any idiot you want. You think you are American, you are democrats, you are republicans, you are the government, you are a person. Actually you are a bunch of nothing, because you are dormant. Dormant doughnuts do not make sense. I used to say in Canada, dormant doughnuts do not make any sense. They are only good when they are fresh. Then how long the freshness of a doughnut lasts? You know that. So, you have to gradually grow to develop your intuition and your consciousness and you have to do it consciously. Once you consciously reach your intuition, you will be a totally different person. Then you will be: I call on myself and my psyche. I made one mistake in America, I told somebody where their lost dog was and I remember that for six months my telephone never stopped. “My cat is lost, my dog is lost.” And I am the only one who can find it. And I said to myself, from today onward I‘ll never do this wrong again. I just did it out of goodwill, I never meant to impress anybody. But I was very innocent, I was new, and I was hungry. The person couldn’t come, because the dog was lost, so I said, “Go and find your dog such and such place and bring it home and bring my food.” That’s all I did. I was straight, honest person. And somehow the word spread that I can find a lost dog. So if I can find a lost dog, I can find a lost cat, but actually, I can find a lost soul, that’s my specialty. That’s where I come from. And I believe in the beauty of the individual. That’s where I do not fit in with the normal trend. I believe that every individual is very bountiful, beautiful and blissful, but simply undeveloped—this undeveloped, dormant self, just sit-



ting there and rotting for nothing. So if we can somehow work it out, then we are complete. That’s a great joy to live. I am not saying that you are going to be all good. No, no, no, no. What I’m saying is that when things are going badly, the worst, you are going to be good. That’s real good. Then you will have the courage, the endurance and the grace to go through all that there is. Then everybody will say, “Oh my God, that person is a saintly person.” That’s a real human. Then everybody will trust you. They will respect you, they will adore you, they will communicate with you. They will trust your forgiveness; they will trust your projection; they will trust your personality. Because they will see the shining soul in you, the spirit of God, that’s what you are. Then you don’t have to pay two hundred eighty dollars to look natural blond, look what? Then your looks will be your looks. And within the eye there will be a look which will look at you and say, “Oh, beautiful.” There is a richness of a human, which you can share. And that’s what we’ll develop slowly through these classes, and keep going.


Hope to be with you next week, just for two days, meanwhile I have taught you yesterday and today, and there is a week in-between to practice that. So, please don’t waste time, just continue everyday for eleven minutes or twenty two minutes, whatever time you can spare to practice and just go through it as you went with me. Meanwhile . . . May the Long Time Sun Shine upon you All love surround you And the pure light within you Guide your way on. Sat Nam. Yogi Bhajan: It is our prayer.

May Thy light grow; may Thy consciousness guide; may Thy endurance sustain; may Thy character work. May you live in beauty, bounty and bliss. Sat Nam.


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a


KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION SELF-HYPNOSIS TO DEVELOP INTUITION Yogi Bhajan • March 8, 1995

POSTURE:

Sit in a comfortable meditative posture.

MUDRA:

Bring your hands up by your sides, palms up toward the ceiling, elbows at your side. Place the thumb and mercury finger together in Buddhi Mudra.

EYES:

Close the eyes. Focus on the back of the neck. Look through the back of the neck.

BREATH: MUSIC: TIME:

Long and deep. “Longer the breath; longer the life.”

Singh Kaur’s Guru Guru Wahe Guru, Guru Ram Das Guru

11-22 minutes

Inhale deep. Press your hands into your chest. Press hard. 30 seconds. Exhale. Inhale deep. Press your hands into your navel. Press hard. 30 seconds. Exhale. Inhale deep and fold the hands at the heart (prayer pose) and press the hands together—hard. 30 seconds. Exhale and relax.

TO END:

COMMENTS:

You must understand, if your eyes cannot see in the back of your neck, you are not covered. This is the first step of intuition. If you cannot see the unseen, you cannot know the Unknown, you cannot talk the unutterable, then you are not a human. Get lost. Float with the music. Do it consciously. You’ll learn to ask yourself instead of others. Your Self is the only God you can ask. Be very relaxed.

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Chapter two Study Questions and Projects

1. How would you describe the relationship between consciousness and intuition? Without consciousness we do not have basic intuition. Without intuition can we have basic consciousness? 2. Our embodied mind is always subject to the dynamics of our three parts: the animal, the earthling, and the angel. These are regulated by our consciousness and presided over by the Self. Contemporary research has shown us how the brain is part of the dance between these three aspects of our human experience. We know that all of the meaningful associations, value decisions, and the ability to assess the implications of our actions suddenly turn off under certain emotional challenges, especially fear. The old brain turns off the frontal brain.

3. Exercise: Gather examples from the news around the world. Find examples of exemplary individuals who carry out their role as an angel or earthling well; and then suddenly, the animal takes over. In turn, find examples of those who seem to be prisoners of their habits and completely identified and hypnotically entranced with their own darker side who then act in ways which are clearly from their angel or human aspect. Share these in your group. What characteristics of the mind hypnotize us into being unable to see how we change from breath to breath? How can sensing our own changes from breath to breath allow the gradual birth of compassion for our own foibles and those of others?

Exercise: Examine several times in your own life when the old brain, or animal aspect, has put aside the earthling or the angel. Identify for yourself the conditions that provoked this pattern. What emotions are you susceptible to? Is it the emotion itself, or is it the intensity of the emotion? In exploring your own experience, try to identify three different ways to redirect the powerful old emotions and allow for a victory to come through; how can you elevate your reactions and experiences so that you express the consciousness of the earthling and angel within you. Share your experience with your study group and allow the energy of the group and their experiences to generate the necessary awareness and heat to cultivate new pathways which serve you to stay conscious and human under any emotional challenge.



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mind & Meditation • STUDY GUIDE

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mind & meditation • STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER THREE

Dynamics of the mind: Chambers, Aspects, & Thoughts



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being human is being intuitive An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

November 21, 1990 WE ARE HUMAN BY NATURE. And we develop our attitude, we develop our nature, toward success. The main concern in our life, whether we are young or old, whether we are male or female, is to be successful. Actually, the spiritual path is not a very easy path. It demands a very strong discipline and it’s not easy. We have a nature ; to develop our facility, our faculties, our facets of life to be happy. Even the religious discipline is to reach the ultimate infinity. Question is can we do it? Answer is no. Whereas I’ve imposed a question; I’ve also answered in a big no. So what are we working for? Is there any way that we can get to be a happy person? Normally the answer is “No.” The real answer is yes; because as a human being you do not have any capacity to gain knowledge and be happy if you do not have intu-

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ition. You have the apparatus and the process of intuition in you but, in most cases, it is very under developed. One may be a very successful engineer and be very successful in the life of his profession but will fail terribly as a father, or may be a miserable failure as a husband. A woman may be very successful as a housewife, but may be a terrible failure as far as working is concerned. We can specialize in one aspect of life—a field of expertise is a necessity of survival—consciously or subconsciously. But it is not granted that we are all-around successful. And there’s no special miracle except that we humans have to be human as our first identity. And to be human means to be intuitive. It does not mean to be a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, or a Muslim or a Dutch or a German, or an American or an Englishman, or tall



or small. It doesn’t make any difference. Either you are intuitive or you are not. That is how this Kundalini Yoga came to exist—to become intuitive. Not to be a psychic. To be psychic is a natural gift. You may have it, you may not have it. But to be intuitive, you can process, progress, develop and you can become that way. Just look at your nature. You don't have any hooves, horns, or coarse skin like a rhino, or any other defense mechanism. The natural defense mechanism you have is your intuition. You must know, before the space and time hits you, what it shall be. We ignore our basic capacity and we don't work for that. We put our whole energy into becoming professionals and becoming rich. We think by money and by our capacities and by our resources we can succeed in life. Our trend is that way. Some people are very dry of love, some people are overflowing with it. We all have temperament and tendencies. The majority of what governs us is our subconscious. Our subconscious creates patterns in our neurons in our brain which we copy again and again and again and again. And our tendencies lead to a life where we repeatedly make mistakes. In one counseling case, I found out that this woman marries every third year. Period. She marries every third year; she remains married two years; she divorces; waits for one year; marries again. And this goes on. Twelve years, four marriages; you can count on it. And if you ask her, what are you doing? She says, well time is ticking. Time ticking! Why can’t you find and understand beforehand the ticking of time? We’ve become subject to what we call “time clicking” We can also call it “subconscious patterning”; we call it “hidden desire”; we call it many things. But the question is how long as humans we are willing to suffer under those patterns? First, we don’t know. Then we come to know, after we act. Then we struggle. We want to get out of something we got into. People became tired of this tug–of–war way of life— pulling and pushing. They started to look into some kind of discipline where they could concentrate and by the intuitive clock, they could guide their way and their life. That means that all the influences from outside shall be filtered by your intelligence and shall be worked out by consciousness. When you do this the scenario will be nothing but pure higher conscious wisdom. There will be a place for emotions and feel-


ings, duties and relationships. The elements of the body will be subjected and put in their proper place, and your direction shall be intuitive. The science which develops in a human mind an intuitive procedure of life and living is called Kundalini Yoga. Normally it is said to be a dangerous science. Yes— without a teacher it is; just as driving a car without learning means you can have an accident. Kundalini Yoga means subjecting your ego to your creative consciousness. In other words, don’t become a habitual animal, but become totally trained in sensitivity. It means super sensitivity, not within yourself, but in relation to all the people you know, how you deal with and feel about them. Naturally, it is a very powerful way of living. My process in teaching this is based on the subject: “Am I supposed to suffer?” The answer is no! “What is the way? Can I protect myself?” Answer is no! But I want to protect myself. I want to have a relationship. “Can I have a relationship?” Answer is no! But I want to have a relationship. “What should I do so I can have all those things that I want—to not suffer, to have a relationship and to be protected?” Become intuitive. You must know. Be sensitively learned. My antennas must guide me to what is going on. Am I not tired of living a ridiculous, dumb life; to be a pawn of circumstance, emotion and feelings; to be intellectual but not intelligent? Am I not tired to just be in the process of the subjective mind as it goes on and on? Ultimately it takes over all of me. It consumes me. Then finally there is nothing left of me. I live 50, 60, 70 years and then go empty-handed. What did I achieve? A few sexual relationships, a few dialogues, a few friends, a few enemies. Somewhere I won. Somewhere I lost. Some money in the bank; some in taxes; some few kisses, some few slaps; some sweet loves and some bitter reprimands. Is that all that life is? That is the question which was asked by the yogis and the siddhis and the wise men or men of great religion or men of great experience; that was the question: “As humans, do we have the right to live an absolutely happy life?” Answer is yes! How? Develop your intuition. MEDITATION: MAKE YOUR MIND SENSITIVE [See end of lecture for complete write-up.]

Are you ready? Is it attractive enough? You are willing to work for it, in spite of your inflexible bodies? Okay. (Yogiji


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laughs.) Let us do the first exercise. Please sit down with a

straight spine. Just see how little it is, how simple it is, but how powerful it is. That’s all I want to show you. Just keep the spine as straight as you can. That’s all that’s required. I’m not asking you to do anything other than that. And raise this finger. Just this right index finger. And put your eyes at the tip of your nose. That’s all. Now be honest! Your eyes must see the tip of your nose. And your one finger should stand up. That’s all—nothing more, nothing less. Something will start happening in three minutes. You can guarantee it. The finger you are using upwards is the Jupiter finger. Jupiter is the guru of all knowledge, within and without the human being. If the finger is straight and stiff, the patterns of the brain will respond automatically and the neurons in the brain will regroup themselves. And if your eyes are looking at the tip of the nose, so you’ll be in control of the optical nerve, action shall happen. I am watching my watch. Within three to five minutes, you will feel the energy flowing through you. That means your sensitivity is increasing. Now ladies and gentlemen, that’s all it takes, as a first step in the alphabet of intuition. But if you cannot keep your eyes at the tip of the nose and you cannot keep one finger stiff, tight, steel-stiff, it’s nobody’s fault but your own. So please try to gain an experience by looking at the tip of the nose. Try harder. Don’t look left and right, don’t let the mind play games. And keep that finger stiff. Put your entire energy into it. Just watch how inside the body the sensitivity will change. It looks very simple to you. Rishi Dusht Daman experimented for his whole life, 120 years, to find this simple truth which you are practicing right now. His realization was that if man can enforce the tip of his Jupiter finger into steel stiffness, he can grab from the universe the Jupiter energy; and if by the optical nerve he can totally shut up the mind and its misbehavior, it will create a basic pattern of intuition. And you are exactly doing what he said, the result will follow. But if you change the eyes for a second, you’ve got to start again from that second. So please, continuously continue. Concentrate deeply. Breathe long and deep. And just make it happen. As we keep on speaking to you about Kundalini, we will also try to give you certain experiences along the way so your development may be by your own right. It’s a very mathematical science. Just follow the blueprint and you shall have the

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result. That’s why it is so exact. It is given and said to be followed exactly. That’s why we learn it under the guidance of an expert so that we may not miss the point or any points about it. Please concentrate more and more; keep the finger absolutely stiff. And keep the optical nerve totally under control. Get a perspective of size, color, . . . beliefs. Concentrate, concentrate. Don’t move. Still yourself. Let the energy come in. Let your subtle senses feel it. Give your neurons in the brain a chance to reformulate the pattern. The spine will start changing the serum and the grey matter in the skull will start changing its qualities. These are the simple things which will happen and are happening now. Now you are reaching the irritating zone and you will want to change or shift or move. Block it; stop it. Contain that impulse. Concentrate now. For seven minutes, totally keep yourself under control. We shall call on you in seven minutes. Keep concentrating. Don’t allow the eyes to close; don’t allow the finger to be loose, keep it stiff. We have two more minutes to go. What you can learn by experience you cannot learn by talking. Now it is very important that you concentrate with full heart and head. Time will move very slowly now. You are on the last minute. Reinforce your determination. Very slowly start raising your hand straight up and inhaling slowly, deeply. Stretch your hand totally up straight, inhaling deeply, keeping only one finger up. Inhale deep and hold the breath. Stretch the hand totally up, as much as you can. Now exhale. Inhale again deep, deep, and stretch up. Exhale, inhale again deep, deep, stretch up. Please relax. Now the way to circulate this energy that you have gained is to turn around and talk to each other. You have fifteen minutes; do nothing but talk, whatever you want to talk about is your option. Don’t meditate, don’t be calm, don’t relax, keep talking. Now the question is we can sit here all night and we can wait for 20 years to do something really good. But it’s not possible for me to come from the United States all the time; it’s very rare and foreign that I get a chance to come from my headquarters. Number 1: I have overworked. Number 2: I am a workaholic and I have too much work. Number 3: It’s not right to work so much now. Number 4: I love people too much. Number 5: I must go and share with them. Number 6:



People respond or not. Number 7: I will try my best. Number 8: Doesn’t matter what happens. Now the second exercise is very painful and is very difficult. Well, I have to be very honest with you. I’m not going to hide things. And you may not do it. But if you care to do it, it is a very good one, not the very best one (that will come later). Working with me is very hard because I don’t believe in wasting time; I don’t believe in initiation; I don’t believe in buying your attention. I believe in one thing—one, two, three: Come, do the job, see it is done, out. (Students laugh.) I have no axe to grind. You know all my life I’ve never worked for money. I have never worked for attention. I don’t need anything. I just work because some great man taught me a great science and I found my happiness. I believe that because I found my happiness and I am just a human being, that everybody should find their happiness and be who they are. It’s a very simple rule with me, try to understand, I’m not one of those yogis and swamis who lay the trip and the personal number and agenda and all that stuff, I’m just a scientist. I found it because I was the greatest rebel. I was not a very easy as a boy, I just wanted to know: why sun is round? Who says earth moves? Why is there a nose between two eyes, why it’s not on the knees? You don’t ask those questions; I did ask them. If the nose would have been in the knees, the gravity of the neurons in the brain would not have been that balanced because then the pituitary would have to have been in the ankles. You didn’t ask those questions; I did ask; and I did get the answer, so there’s the difference. So, now are you ready to do this next exercise? [Question comes from a student.] Yogi Bhajan: You are dizzy? When you were doing it?

Now? That’s all right. That’s not a problem. This is the first time you’ve done it. Let us see what you do the second time. All right? These are your five fingers, left hand. Spread them equally. Just equally. Spread them equally. All right? Have you done it? And bring them to the heart center. Spread equally. There should be no difference in their spread. Completely spread them. You know you have to go to a guru and bring water to him for twenty years and then he may, in the end, while dying, teach you this one exercise. Try to evaluate it. It’s very (Yogiji laughs.) So, I’m just sitting here and I’ve started to give it to


you. I mean, just try to understand it, give it your attention and effort. Spread the fingers equally, as much as you can. And then bring the hand right at the center, it is called the heart center, Hirday Chakra they call it. Now this hand, this is my right hand, take it 60 degrees up and forward, palm down. Spread these five fingers. Look at the tip of the nose and forget about yourself. [question from audience] No. This is my left hand, that’s on the heart. This is my right hand which is at 60 degrees. The angle from the armpit must not be straight, must not be higher than 60 degrees. The nervous center of the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and action system is in the armpit, remember that! Armpit is the most important, and often ignored, part of the body; and you neglect it the most. You think it is just a joint. It is not. Your entire nervous system is based there. We are dealing with one of the most dedicated points of our energy—the nervous energy by which we live. So it is very important. Now you are getting all the five energies at the same time. The thumb represents the id, the ego, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun and Mercury. Five main planets, underneath is the Mars planet, and the Venus is under the id. So that makes seven and there are two left: moon head and moon tail. So please understand, you are almost in control of your total energy. [Editor’s Note: He refers to the qualities of energy in the macrocosm of your body/mind. The fingers and areas of the hand share these energies as a microcosm. The qualities of those energies are represented classically by the planets and stars at different locations on the hand.] Look at the tip of the nose

again. If your vision is blurry, don’t mind. When the optical nerve needs to be strengthened, it sometimes starts letting you see two, three, four things. You are gradually getting intuitive. Steady, steady, breathe long and deep and be constant and consistent and try your best. I’m not saying it’s an easy exercise so if you jerk around a little bit or something like that it is expected, but I don’t think you will do that, you are good students. I think you will stick around pretty good. I’ll give you a handicap. I’ll count the time you started. Not now. I’ll count the previous time. That’s a concession isn’t it? So it means you have already done it for two minutes. That’s good news. (Students laugh.)

You may be Mr. Sweden, but in seven minutes you will


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understand where God is. You will exactly find the location of Almighty God within seven minutes with this exercise. Your own body will say, “I don’t obey you. Who are you? Watch out. Watch out, watch out, something is going to happen.” This body you think is yours and is your vehicle that you can move around. This body and all your senses, your sexuality, your sensuality, your emotions and feelings, this very body, is going to say “Mr. what’s your name, what are you doing to me? I am no friend of yours; you are no friend of mine.” That’s going to happen. It is a parting of the ways. That relationship, which you think and presume is forever, you’re going to appreciate as something is going to tell you that it is actually separate from you. Watch out. This ‘ha ha’ has started. That is the beginning—you have started feeling that something is happening. It will start first at the elbow, then it will come down to the armpit, then the hand will start shaking, then the ribcage will start changing. That’s the most important thing you can do to yourself. To bring the ribs to the original birthrate adjustment and it’s automatic. It’s really painful, but not as painful as you think. You can still hold your ground. And you know, you have already done it for five minutes. Can you believe that? I gave you two minutes handicap, remember? Now try these last two minutes—with full force. Become Mr. Tough. Miss Tough. Mrs. Tough. Ms. Tough—whatever you are. Stretch the arm out. Doesn’t matter: “I must win.” Now this is a matter of determination. It’s not a matter of thinking, or imagining, or exercising your will. That’s all passé. “I shall win now. And within two minutes I’m going to prove to Yogiji that I am the victor.” That’s what it means. Now, actually, time moves slowly but it is moving. Come on. Come on, for your own strength. The entire pattern will change. Seven minutes is not a big deal in life. Stand–stand–stand. Resist. Resist the temptation of giving up. Win! This is the last minute! Totally last minute. Absolutely not a second more. Believe me! Now it is just half a minute—30 seconds. 15 seconds. 10 seconds. 5 seconds. Inhale deep. Deep. Hold and stretch. Stretch. Exhale. Inhale deep and stretch. For God’s sake! DO whatever you can do, but must you stretch. Exhale. Inhale again. Deep. And this is last time--stretch tight. Relax. Very good. Look at the one man he is still keeping it. You know at least we have one hero. Very good. Now you can talk, converse. Talk. Talk. Talk.

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Student: What is a Mahan Tantric? Yogi Bhajan: Tantric is that he knows longitude and lati-

tude, that is where the cross energy is. Mahan Tantric, by practice, takes the diagonal route of the energy and controls it. Student: So you are the center of the energy? Yogi Bhajan: Yes, of the diagonal energy. There are two things in life, lever (is a diagonal energy) and a lens. Through the lens you can see what you cannot see. With a lever you can move what you cannot move. And it is the diagonal energy. Student: So the diagonal energy, it's spiritual energy? It is not psychic energy? Yogi Bhajan: It's spiritual. Student: True spiritual energy? Pure? Yogi Bhajan: It has to be pure; because if it is impure, it shall bend. Because energies do cross, so it has to be the supreme energy, the Adi Shakti, the primal force. [continues social dialogue with student . . . ]

All right. Your five minutes is up. Now, we’ll do the third kriya of this exercise. We have done twice, right? I will not leave this room without completing something. So, I am very pleased that you are very cooperative, but I need a little more cooperation, just a little more. You take these two fingers, simple thing, just move them; just the fingers, not the hand; just the fingers. And breathe breath of fire. You know breath of fire? And move concurrently. Just thefingers. (He moves both index fingers in quick circles with the breath rhythm). And breath should be quick. Now you know what we are doing. We are hitting at the mystery of our blood formation. It’s so important. What you are doing is much healthier than taking two tons of vitamins. You understand? Just move it. Na, na, Not the hand, just the finger. Round and round—not this way—you are moving the hand, just the finger, one finger. No movement of the hand. Command your finger, not the hand. [Student: I am pregnant, three months, I read I shouldn’t do Breath of Fire. Yogi Bhajan: No you are okay. Up until the seventh month you can do it.] Don’t take the help of the hand at all. The blood chemistry will change to be normal and you must do it. It is not guaranteed; but it can help avoid Cancer in your body. It is a help to that precaution. If your blood chemistry is original, you



shall not get blood disease. And it is this exercise, normally, that I give people because a lot of people have problems and these fatal diseases are very much on the increase My own trouble started—my own blood started clotting- because of overwork, over-flying, high radiation areas I had to cross through; I did this exercise myself to heal myself. It is called Sodarshan Kriya. It is very important. You will see Lord Vishnu raising one finger and moving it. He moves so fast that the whole wheel that hangs on it moves with it. It is symbolic, but we can learn from that. We are not going to become Lord Vishnu. Neither do we want to raise the whole wheel. All we want is it should change the entire Sun— “Sun” means blood. It is not difficult so I won’t give you any handicap to shorten the time. Now start working for seven minutes. No, no, no. No arms. You are a young man, just use the finger. You can make your body disease free by doing it for seven minutes. I am sitting before you as an example. I did abuse my body, I overworked, I agree, I should not have done it; I did it; then I got sick, I got ill, then I recuperated. You can do the same. You can take the precaution. Breath of Fire. Change the blood chemistry. Create the fire in the breath, in the lungs. Inhale, exhale quick. [Yogi Bhajan does Breath of Fire.] Just like that. It is considered one breath if you don’t discontinue it. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Some of you are not breathing quick. That’s cheating. That’s not right. You’ve got to breath quick so that the blood chemistry must start changing now. We have to change the pattern here. You have to hit the pituitary with that breath. It’s a very simple scientific fact. It will give you a new health. That is sure. If I tell you to move the whole hand you’ll love it, but no, it’s one finger. It can’t be the whole hand. It is only the index finger. It works from here (Yogiji points to the top of his head – the crown chakra). Very good. Very good. Keep doing it. I’m watching the time, don’t worry. The moment the seven minutes are over, I’ll let you know. I promise. Look, it is very difficult to come to Stockholm from the USA; it is almost 6,000 miles. It takes 20 hours sitting in a plane. I’ve come here because I love you. So we must achieve something. We’ve come here to do something real. I can talk and charm you and go away. That won’t work. Come on. Come on. (Yogiji laughs.) I am looking at each of you. No cheating. It is working; your aura has started changing. Keep going. You are really good students, I agree. Quick breath,


quick breath, quick breath. We have to change three circulations of the whole blood going through the lungs, it takes time. Hit, hit with the breath hard. Harder you hit, better will be the result, deeper the breath, more goes to the oxygen, more blood changes, more the chemistry changes, the Jupiter finger changes the pattern and then you are set! Otherwise, remember the chemotherapy. Oh, that is more painful than anything. Move, move, move. Breathe, Breathe, Breathe. Move the finger. Very good. Very good. Neck straight. Yes. Hello? Hello. Sit Straight. Move the finger. Breathe hard. You can change the entire basic chemistry of the blood, now, right now, not going outside, not asking somebody, now, this minute. All you have to change is the basic molecule so that it can be healthy. It should be disease free, that’s all. That’s all I’m giving you: a chance. Give yourself a chance. You know my dressage teacher, she was from Stockholm. And she died of Cancer. I couldn’t believe it: she was young, tall, beautiful, intelligent, international. The disease got her quickly, like one, two, three, gone. I wish I had taught her this kriya; I knew it at that time also. But nobody knew that something wrong inside was happening; you don’t know either. Change the fundamental molecule of the blood and change the chemistry to be protected. That’s all you’re doing. It’s a hard effort. But seven minutes is not a long time in life. Oh yes, you have done pretty good. Five minutes, wow. Two more minutes. It’s very easy to reach. Come on. Come on. Kundalini Yoga is not a useless thing--to just sit in one posture for 36 years and hope you’re going to find God; in Kundalini Yoga it is here now, in seven minutes. You’re going to find, through your finger, that almighty God is Jupiter. Don’t worry. Hurry up. Keep doing slowly, little–by–little, one–by–one, one step at a time. Win! Win! Win! One more minute. Keep going; keep going, move fingers; move fingers; move the breath. Very good. Inhale deep. Stretch both hands up. Stretch up and hold the breath tight. With a cannon fire , exhale. Very good. Inhale deep again. Deep. Stretch tight. More! More! More! Just get up. With a cannon fire, exhale. Inhale again, deep. Stretch up. Stretch tight. Inhale more. Stretch up. Relax. Now this is a question and answer period, so feel free to ask questions and we’ll give you the reply as best we can. Student: These exercises that we have done—are they dangerous to do by yourself?


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Yogi Bhajan: We have done them, we have practiced

them. They were very well done, now you keep on practicing them, and you perfect them. They are not dangerous. Even eating a banana is dangerous when you are not hungry. I supervised it; I studied it and you did very well. Student: How often do you suggest we do it? Yogi Bhajan: Once a day. Once a day: 7 minutes for each, 21 minutes total with 5 minute interval between. Student: Is there any danger? Yogi Bhajan: Sometimes the energy rushes up and people normally get phobic or fearful about that. That's the only danger one can be involved with. I mean to say, it is dealing with the life force itself. It is not something very casual and it does give you an experience. We don’t expect a person to be off base under any circumstance; therefore, we would like you to have a supervisor as we did. That’s all, no big deal. It’s not that you’re going to fall from the sky. It’s not that dangerous. We don’t want people to use yoga as an excuse either and say, “Because I’m a yogi, therefore I don’t talk to anybody,” etc. We want people to live a normal life. Kundalini Yoga is a yoga for householders. People who run their families, people who run a married life. They face everyday difficulties and in spite of them they become yogis. Normally you see in other yogas: we don’t get married, be single, be celibate, be this, be that. In Kundalini yoga we allow a normal life. And still, we want people to be excellent. Student: What is White Tantra? Yogi Bhajan: White Tantra is taking you, putting in a mold, and clean it out. It is washer/drier together. Normally, you know, you exercise slowly, gradually, and it takes time. And once in a while, we do that course and one, two, three, go through it, and you are fit for next time. It's a diagonal energy which we deal with. That's what Kundalini is also, diagonal energy. There are two forces in life, the diagonal force and the lens—the lever and the lens. The lever moves that which cannot be moved and the lens sees what cannot be seen. These are the only two forces. We deal with them, we deal with intuition, and we deal with them in the movement. Tantra. Tantra means length and breadth. And that is how we weave the cloth. You know, threads are threads, but once you weave the cloth, then they become very strong. Then you can hold anything in it.

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Student: Is Kundalini Yoga just the same as Tantra? Yogi Bhajan: White Tantra is not the car, but is taking the

car through car washer—to take the car through the car washer, to wax and clean and polish it, and then keep it going. Kundalini Yoga is becoming the adept, becoming the expert. It is something you do everyday. White Tantric you do once in a while. It is the same thing. It is just as you drive the car everyday, you are okay, you go to office, go to work, go shopping, but once in a while you take it through the brushes at the car wash. And the water, the brushes, the wax, and they clean it all out, it comes out new. That's the difference. Kundalini Yoga is a way of life. For every householder it is a way of life. Everybody must practice for 62 minutes a day to keep fit, to keep going, to keep alive, to keep being intuitive. These are small exercises, but they are very powerful. Student: You called the Aura a magnetic field. So can’t we measure it? Yogi Bhajan: That’s true. It is an electromagnetic psyche. Yes. Yes. Yes. Ultimately in another 10–20 years people will start measuring, diagnosing, and treating. It will become a way of therapy. I think once people start measuring auras, then we'll develop electromagnetic machines for it. The magnetic therapy which is now going on is like the very old science, it’s not contemporary; it’s a 3,000 year old science. They used to put a magnet at a certain part of the body to attract the blood and change the chemistry and heal the person. They will start doing it now. [Student asks question.] But it is not totally developed yet. We are working on it. That is our 21st century medical system. They will put you through a tube, pass you through certain electromagnetic fields, and you will come out next side, totally new. No problem. 6,000 karonas (units of money)—something like that. Yes. It will develop like that. Because your life force is in your arcline, from earlobe to earlobe, and the moment it can be corrected, your disease can disappear. It's true, and they will develop it. Student: What if you do it for a shorter or longer time than we did? Yogi Bhajan: Period? Time-wise? You just do the time. Longer is neither good, nor shorter is good; because time has been found out to be enough effective. They call it enough effective. Too much is crazy; that’s why you need a teacher. Too little doesn’t work. If it is seven minutes, then it is seven



minutes. Nine minutes is no good. That’s what they say. That’s why we always, with each exercise, give the time. Student: Is there a difference between Black and Red Tantra? Yogi Bhajan: There's a difference between day and night. White Tantric is to help and serve, and a person who does that has to be completely a servant and humble. Red Tantric is for sexual energy and the senses. And Black Tantric is for mental control and controlling other people. One is Stockholm, other is Oslo, and third is Berlin. It’s totally different. They are definitely different in quality, quantity, direction, practices, methods, facets, use. Student: What is the relationship between yoga and Tantra? I trained for yoga, can I not lead a Tantra? Yogi Bhajan: Your training is your personal responsibility. I have not trained you; I shall not comment. Correct? Correct? What you have been told, you’ve been told. What you know, you know. I don’t know. I have not examined you; I do not know what your training is. And I do not know how far you studied or accomplished that subject matter , therefore, whatever you have learned is very useful. But I shall not comment. You can’t ask me to comment on that. But if I examine you, I touch you, I’ll tell you this is right, this is wrong; I’ll take the responsibility. Then I’ll comment. Right, Thomas? It’s a serious science. We do not certify a teacher until we are sure. As a teacher, first you must understand, the oath of a Teacher: “I am not a woman, I am not a man, I am not a person, I am not myself, I am a Teacher.” (He curls each finger then extends the thumb up as he says “I am a teacher”.) We lose four privileges to become a teacher. It’s not a joke. A person has to be competent to go through those four aspects. I am a man and I am a person, but I have to forego. I am not a woman, I am not a man, I am not a person, I am not myself, I am a Teacher. It’s a very powerful oath. You have to be absolutely, completely impartial. It may be against you. Still your word and opinion should be absolutely impartial. Therefore, it is a very great responsibility. Because whatever you say will affect the other person, so whatever you say has to be absolutely truth. Not circumstantial, not environmental, not personal, not subjective, neither objective, it has to be the truth. And it doesn’t matter, pair of opposites does not affect. It may please, it may displease, but you shall speak the per-


sonal, bare infinite truth. And that’s the job of the teacher. Otherwise, it’s all hocus–pocus. Then one can do anything one wants. That’s not admissible; because you’re supposed to serve the life of a person, to guide the life to complete happiness. It won’t happen if there’s an error in advice. Student: Where did it develop from? Yogi Bhajan: I don’t remember, I think about 5,000 years ago, some great man under the guidance of God got tired of being celibate. I think he wanted to get married and still be a yogi and worked it out. That’s as far as my recollection is concerned—that’s what it was. There are a lot of scriptures on it if you want to read them. They are very confusing, but they are pretty good. Because they are written in indirect language, a normal person should not understand them. So that’s also why also we require a teacher. It’s a yoga of the householder, you understand? It’s not a yoga of the celibates. So it has all the worldly problems with it. The idea was to remain aboveboard. Student: What effect does so little light have? Yogi Bhajan: Here? When you come here in the summer, there’s absolutely no night. It all balances out. You know how long their summer days are? Yeah, that’s true. I mean, now they are just mellow. (Yogiji laughs.) That’s why I always choose to come in the winter. And the more earth is slow, it is true north. It’s very effective. If these people practice really well and constantly, as the flood of energy comes in the summer and less in the winter, their progress can be faster; because they get balance out of the imbalance. That’s why the yogis go to the heights, the Himalayas, and to all those places, just to get balance out of the imbalance. Student: I wanted to ask about food. There have been very good Golden Temple restaurants you ran, but few now. Yogi Bhajan: Yeah, we started with the restaurants. But it is a very hard time to run a restaurant. But normally—now there are very beautiful books-- every home can be a restaurant. Keep the recipe book in front of you and cook it well. Yeah all recipes are standardized and they are very good, very healthy. And clientele is always there. Those two good things are there. But it is hard work—normally you close the restaurant at 1 o’clock and you start early in the morning at 4am Very long hours. Very tough job. Student: Could you say something about GOD?


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Yogi Bhajan: God is a very wonderful thing. You can find

it in the English dictionary. It is a word. It has three letters in it. G-O-D. One who generates, one who organizes, one who delivers the totality. It is a constant infinity within the infinity. And that is the faculty of a human also. Student asks, “So, God is a reality?” God is the absolute reality and absolute infinity and absolute totality. It is perceivable within the senses of the finite because our mind is also at the electromagnetic energy of the infinity. Therefore we have a touch of infinite through our mental powers. That’s why we have access to God. If you ever want to find God, just open up the English dictionary. It is sometimes very funny, very, very cozy, it’s very comforting. Normally we just say God is God, but when you look at it, they give four or five meanings. It’s quite, quite useful. Do it tonight if you have a dictionary at home. Open it up. Find the word “god”; you will be surprised. That is where God lives: In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and word was God. His home is in the dictionary right? That’s where I found it. That was the first question I was asked in AmericYogi Bhajan: Have you found God? I said, “Yes.” Where it is? I said, “I know the address.” It’s true. It’s really in all rational senses it is true: God is a word. It’s made of three powers: Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh, [Yogiji quotes a Sanskrit scripture] . . . so you look at that. It tells you that ultimately the three powers of generating, organizing and delivering is the essence which is beyond and within beyond, and still beyond and still within that still beyond is that what it is that it is not that it is not because it is that not; therefore it is God. That is the exact translation of that. No, it’s very enjoyable to be spiritual, once you reach a certain status of spirituality, it’s very enjoyable. Less than that, it is a little jerky; it’s stormy. It’s landing in bad weather. But once you are a good ace pilot and plane is good and weather is nice, it’s very cozy. It’s very good to be spiritual. It is. It’s the best profession. Everybody looks to you, great! People give you things and everything. But you have to be unattached. That’s the beauty of it. It’s something that is more subtle and more decent than subtlety and decency; that is spirituality. Because it’s the totality, reality, infinity, dignity and divinity all combined in one. It’s a good thing to be.

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That’s it? Should we meditate now? Come on, let’s sit down— last part of the class today. Please fold your hands, this way, at the heart center. (Locks right hand fingers over the top of the left hand fingers and graps them into a lock.) And close your eyes. And very kindly look at the forehead (put on that mantra Waah Yantee) and just hear these sounds and copy it mentally. [Nirinjan Kaur’s Waah Yantee is played.]

Now put on the English version of it. [Nirinjian Kaur’s Waah Yantee English version is played.]

May the long time sun shine upon you All love surround you And the pure light within you Guide your way on Heavenly Father, Divine principle, Infinite Creative: give the world a chance to peace and tranquility. Silence the drums of war and let the songs of rejoicing and unity be played. Give mankind a chance to survive itself and this generation. Give peace and tranquility to the mother earth. Give us the capacity to work for it. May, in thy name and thy prayer, we ask for all of mankind to be happy healthy and holy and peaceful. Sat Nam. Thank you very much and God bless you. If heaven’s willing, we’ll meet again. Good bye and best of luck and happy New Year. And on my way I go.



KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION MAKE YOUR MIND SENSITIVE Yogi Bhajan • November 21, 1990

1. Sit with a straight spine. Eyes are at the tip of nose. Make a fist of the right hand, extend the index finger straight up with the thumb over middle finger. Place your hand in front of right shoulder with the closed palm facing the left. Keep the extended finger straight and stiff. The left hand is in Gyan Mudra. Breathe long and deep. 7 minutes. To end: Slowly begin to raise your right hand over your head, maintaining the mudra, and inhale very deeply. Stretch and suspend the breath. Exhale. Repeat twice more. Relax. Comment: Within 3 to 5 minutes you should feel the energy flowing through you. Rishi Daman experimented his whole life, 120 years, to find this simple truth which you are practicing right now. His realization was that if man can enforce the tip of his Jupiter finger into steel stiffness, he can grab from the universe the Jupiter energy; and If by the optical nerve, he can totally shut off the mind to misbehave, it will create a basic pattern of intuition. If you change the eyes for a second, you must start again from the beginning.

1

Break: Talk to your neighbor. You must talk—about anything—but don’t meditate, don’t relax, talk. 5 minutes. 2. Sit with a straight spine. Spread the fingers of the left hand as far apart as possible. There should be an equal distance between each finger. Place the palm flat against the center of the chest. Extend the right arm up at a 60 degree angle and to the right about 30-45 degrees with the palm facing down and fingers spread wide; the elbow is locked and straight. Eyes are on the tip of nose. Breathe long and deep. 7 minutes. To end: Maintain the posture and inhale deep. Hold and stretch that arm out. Exhale. Repeat twice more and relax. Comment: Forget about yourself. My right hand is at 60 degrees; armpit must not be straight, must not be higher than 60 degrees. The nervous center of the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and action system is in the armpit, remember that! Armpit is the most important part of the body, and you neglect it the most. You think it is just a joint. It is not. The entire nervous system is based in the armpit. . . . Now you are getting all the five energies at the same time. The thumb represents the id, the ego, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun and Mercury. Five main planets, underneath is the Mars planet, and the Venus is under the id. . . . So please understand, you are almost in control of your total energy. This exercise adjusts the ribs automatically.

2

Break: Talk to your neighbor. You must talk—about anything—but don’t meditate, don’t relax, talk. 5 minutes.



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aAuthentic

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Relationships • STUDY GUIDE

KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION MAKE YOUR MIND SENSITIVE

3. Sodarshan Kriya: Bring the hands into fists in front of the chest, at shoulder level—about 6-9 inches apart. The fists are facing each other. Extend the two Jupiter fingers straight up. Begin rotating the Jupiter fingers in circles toward each other. (The left finger moves clockwise and the right finger moves counterclockwise.) Move only the fingers, not the hands. Breath: A quick Breath of Fire. 7 minutes. To end: Inhale deep, stretch the hands very tight, over the head, and hold. Exhale with a cannon fire breath. Repeat twice more and relax. Comment: We are hitting at the chemistry of our blood formation. It's so important. What you are doing is much healthier than taking two tons of vitamins. It is not guaranteed, but it will avoid cancer in your body. It is a help to that precaution. You can make your body disease free by doing it for 7 minutes. I did it myself to heal myself. It is called Sodarshan Kriya. It is very important. You will see Lord Vishnu raising one finger and moving it. He moves so fast that the whole wheel moves with it. It is symbolic, but we can learn from that. We are not going to become Lord Vishnu. Neither do we want to raise the whole wheel. All we want is to change the entire Sun and Sun means blood. Break: Talk to your neighbor. You must talk—about anything—but don’t meditate, don’t relax, talk. 5 minutes.

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Mind & Meditation • STUDY GUIDE

Chapter THREE Study Questions and Projects

1. What is the difference between being psychic and being intuitive? How does the practice of Kundalini Yoga relate to each of these? 2. Yogi Bhajan often said “God save us from the psychics, they pollute my faith.” In this talk, he also says that being psychic is a gift which you have at birth. In his many talks, he shared his own intuitive, psychic and spiritual experiences. He shared his knowledge openly with every kind of person. He enjoyed the psychics he met and often invited them to share their talents in private and group settings. From the lectures in this course and The Mind book, and in your own experiences as a teacher discuss with your group the positive uses and the potential dangers of the psychic gift and the necessity of developing intuition. Exercise: Try an experiment. With your study partner, friend or your group, have someone take a container—a cup or a bottle or box—and fill it with objects that are unknown to you or the rest of the group. Get into a meditative state. Try to penetrate the secrets of the container with the psychic projection to know. Then take a short break, do some warm-up exercises or meditate silently. Try to access the secrets of the container by first becoming zero and forming a simple relationship with the container and its contents. Set your intention; allow your relationship with the object to inform you of its nature; let your intuition be your guide; merge with the object so that it and you are not separate. In other words, practice intuition and dwell with yourself in a manner that includes the object; let there be no barrier. After you do these two processes compare your experiences and the results.


3. In order to be happy in life, we have to be aware and act correctly in each moment. Normally our actions are determined by the many signals we receive consciously from the environment as well as the many patterns that subconsciously direct us from within. Do we learn from and pattern our brain more from the environment or from our subconscious? If we learn and pattern our behavior based on the repetitions of our subconscious, how is that affected by our conscious use of intuition? 4. Exercise: In the three-part meditation that Yogi Bhajan guides us through there is a sequence to help us develop intuition. The first exercise focuses our mind and connects us to the larger sensations of the matrix of all reality. The second exercise helps to balance our elements so that we can perceive clearly what we have allowed into our mind during the first exercise. The final exercise increases the vitality of our blood and our magnetic field so that we can act in synchronization with our intention once we've perceived things clearly. Practice this meditation—Make Your Mind Sensitive—for several days and notice what your experience is as you do each of the parts of the kriya. Discuss in your group how the development of mental focus, physical energy and clarity in your emotions helps to develop your intuition step-by-step.


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5. Discussion: In the second exercise of the kriya, Make your Mind Sensitive, Yogi Bhajan calls our attention to the sensations that go through our body. Sensations start with the fingers and the arms and progress to the torso. He says the sensations are normal and are part of the change in the neurons in the body. He also says that if we allow the meditation to continue our energy body will enter into a very sensitive original state. He also says that some people get scared by the change of sensations in the body. The mind starts searching for explanations for the changes in sensations. Even though the sensations simply represent normal change, the fear in the mind sometimes takes over and gives us a phobic reaction. As a teacher you need to guide people very gradually into the state of stillness, the state of awareness and conscious sensitivity. How do you handle their fears? What's the best way to frame and guide your students’ experiences? Students sometimes become attached to the change of sensations in the body instead of dwelling in the awareness that resides within their consciousness. Discuss with each other, as teachers, what types of situations arise and how best to handle them. 6. Yogis used many sources of information to discover these techniques. They used their own experience. They used their subtle senses to see the radiance of the aura. They tested the effects of these exercises on health and illness. Science and the scientific method is becoming the language we use to discuss these things now. We can image the brain and we can watch its electrical and magnetic impulses. We can explore individual molecules and examine molecular structure to understand how change occurs. We cannot yet measure the aura itself; Yogi Bhajan indicates that in the future we will scientifically understand it as well, which will require new tools. The brain is our most sophisticated instrument. Many people increase their sensitivity and intuition in order to sense the aura. Still, at this point in time, there is a gap between what we can measure with scientific tools and what we can perceive with our individual sensitivity. How do you present the idea of the aura to students? What is your own experience of the aura? If you do not see or sense the aura yourself are you confident and comfortable

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in sharing it with others who may sense it more directly than you do? What's the best way to present the information and the ideas that we know as yogis about the aura to people who are not familiar with that? Write out your own experiences in dealing with this topic and your students. Then discuss your experiences in your study group or with your mentor. From this discussion, would you handle this topic differently in the future? How? 7. Discussion: Yogi Bhajan often refers to God in his teachings. But for him it is completely tangible. It is not a thing. It is the reality that creates each thing. It is not a concept. It is a consciousness. God is not something that can be contained within a concept of the mind, but the three qualities of God can be experienced through a frequency of the mind. He says, “God is the absolute reality and absolute infinity and absolute totality. It is perceivable within the senses of the finite because our mind is also at the electromagnetic energy of the infinity. Therefore we have a touch of the infinite through our mental powers. That's why we have access to God.” So the mind is not God; spirit is not God; but we can be a channel through which our experience, even in the finite, can merge with God. This is an unusual concept. Many people are quite allergic to the idea of God. Or they are so attached to it and use it as if they own it. Discuss with each other, how Yogi Bhajan presents the concept of God throughout the teachings. What is the best way to represent it accurately so that each student can have their own experience within themselves?



CHAPTER FOUR

Deep Meditation: Balancing Your Aspects


The science of shuniya An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

November 16, 1994 I HAVE STARTED TEACHING IN A NEW WAY which will not be very popular for the majority of people because it will clash with their belief in knowledge and the practices we have. We have been taught to trust God. We have been taught to be good. We have been asked to be rich, successful and many other good things. So we have set a standard in civilized society and that is the way it should be. We have made freeways and we have made travel lanes and signals, so it is well controlled. We make money, so our businesses are taxed, our inventory is taxed, we are taxed, and even after our death our estate is taxed. Still we are alive and we call it all civilized; civilization. Nobody knows why we are being taxed. We don’t know where it goes. We have no control over it. Somewhere in our foolishness, we have elected some fools and they came out with taxes. So, life is actually a burden, it’s like a heavily taxed business. Under the pressure of that burden, the majority of the time, we don’t have any feeling and

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we do not have any of our senses. We go and go and go in this rush. It is all go, go, go, go! We just move hypnotically to have, have, have; to go, go, go; to be, be, be; that’s all it is. That was the Piscean Age. It is gone. Now, you have to realize something for this Aquarian Age and learn something new: that what is, also is not. In each moment, you must realize that what is, is not so that you can be impersonal in your movement, in your decisions, in your life and your projection; so you cannot be a fool. You don’t need to learn. There is nothing to learn actually. You may have to unlearn, at the same time, what you are learning. So, technically speaking what we are teaching in this course series is a workshop. It was not well advertised that way, but that’s what it is. We’re teaching the science of shuniya, zero. This is how it works. If you are rich or poor, or you are lucky or unlucky, or you have a chance or you don’t have a chance, that is not



critical, that is just what happens to be. That is your base. What is critical is that in reality, you have no experience of your life! If you had no sub-conscious—filled with this hypnotic go, go, go, go of thoughts and impulses—and you could keep a clean and clear unconscious, then the unconscious would give you intuition. That intuition can guide you. You would know where to go. Why go. You would know, “Who are you? Who is going and who is making you go? What is your origin? What is your reality? What is your personality? What is your identity?” With intuition it is a different story. Without that, it’s all just one mad race. We are all running in that race. It doesn’t make sense to anybody. Everybody’s trying to make some sense of it, but nobody knows, people get tired, but still it is just go, go, go. The majority of the time you can have a sense of control. Sometimes the secretion of the glandular system takes you in a new direction and guides you. At that time you are not totally in control. When your glandular system is effectively different than your intention then you are different under that push and pull. We are trying to prepare you for what you have never learned so far. Yes, yes, yes, yes, you are! That’s the fact. But you have to realize at the same moment you are not. Without this realization you cannot make a right move. This planet was without you and shall be without you—that’s the truth. So, when this planet is with you, do not create chaos, egomania, and commotion so that as a living psyche you affect everybody without knowing what you are affecting them for. Sex is very important, very important, but there is nothing in sex and there is nothing without sex. Life is very important, there is nothing in life and there is nothing without life. If you look at the total sum of it, you will be shocked. It cannot be philosophy, it cannot be knowledge, it cannot be an experience, it has to be that moment when the guidance of yourself balances your perceptions, when your unconscious gives you the consciousness that ‘is and is not’ are the same. That is not a small thing to know. Is and is not are the same. The life of a Yogi is when the pair of opposites doesn’t affect him, when praise and insult are the same. How you can know that and live that yourself? We will try today.


MEDITATION: KRIYA FOR THOUGHTLESSNESS [See end of transcript for complete write-up.]

Sit straight with a straight spine. We will do the workshop. Please lock your pinky, which represents the Mercury qualities, with your ego head represented by the thumb. Lock your Mercury, see how I bend it very tightly, underneath totally connected it. The connection is the meat of the thumb is on the nail of the pinky. It is a very good combination, very right. This is what you are going to do: You have to move this quickly at one hundred and eighty times per minute. That’s the frequency required for this exercise. Nothing I can do. Fast really means fast—three times per second! A second is like “tick, tick.” You must have a second hand to see how, it’ll go, like that. So, within each tick of the time, you can move three times. Those who diagnosed these things five thousand years ago knew what a second is; that’s why they came to these calculations. They didn’t have watches at that time. There was not even a sun dial. Time was their conscious estimate, life was their unconscious experience, they had a combination. That’s how this science grew. Unconscious experience in conscious subjection can make you a perfect human being, absolutely divine and beautiful. When you are unconscious and your intuition gives you guidance, the poverty stops, prosperity starts and life is really happy—so move fast! How fast? Justify yourself honestly that you are moving one hundred and eighty rounds (rpm, revolutions per minute) per minute. Some of you have good cars that show you the mileage and everything. It also shows the rpm, how many revolutions per minute your car engine is going. I am not expecting you to become very meditative and spaced out, flying yogis. Just start with a simple thing. You can go to a Gold’s Gym and you can exercise but this exercise, for five minutes, you can’t do; it shocks me! Somebody was showing me, “See my muscle, Yogiji.” I just saw some very big stuff. But when they started doing the kriya in the class, after a minute or so, the person was flat. I said, “Baba, watch it, this is something very funny.” So please move fast, move. Cycle it quickly. When you make the Mercury and id (thumb) locked and you make one hundred and eighty circles per minute, you are actually telling the motor command center in the brain to change the laziness


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into high frequency attention, that’s all it is about. It’s a therapy but you have to do it. Move, move, move, move! It is very difficult to keep the Mercury finger pressed. The Mercury finger controls the sense of coordination, communication, and the heart. If you can do this exercise as I have told you to do and do it right, then your communication about desires will be clear. At least you will not be foolish by desiring everything and doing nothing. You will change; your breathing will change automatically. If that rate of movement is there, then the result will be there. You know the beauty of this exercise? The teacher has to do nothing; all he has to say is a few words and then sit and watch everybody freaking out, but that’s also how good it is. It is not that I dislike hatha yoga. Somebody asked me that question, “What about hatha yoga?” I liked hatha yoga; I practiced it for a long time but it’s unfortunately a very long, drawn out science and—I hate to exercise in a loin cloth. It’s not something I ever liked; it’s my personal thing. I am not saying it’s a bad thing; but if one practices hatha yoga by the book, exactly as it should be, then humanity will be finished in seventy-five years. First rule of the hatha yogi is to be celibate. You can’t marry. Then there will be no second generation. Period. Finished. You are stopping for what? Some visitor is going to come from Mars? No, no, no you move and move beyond being tired. You move beyond being crazy. You move beyond being conscious. You have to create that ecstasy of the unconscious factor in you. You have to work hard around yourself. You are not this body and this movement, discard that notion and go beyond it. Now inhale, and please watch me, open your eyes. Now this is what you are doing right now. I’ve told you to inhale and hold your breath. Right? Hold it tight. Now what you have to do is put your chest out as much as you can and put your shoulders back as much you can, to the point of ‘no death, zero’ they call it. This way you can master your death in your last minute of life. Go, now come forward and breathe out. Now inhale again and repeat that lock, just go, go! Pull it all out. Put your shoulders back so they can meet in the back. Tight, go forward, breath out. Inhale deep, deep, and provide that shoulder lock again, please, tight, go, go tough. Come forward and relax. All right, this is the first exercise set..

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Now you have to do the second set. The second set is this: do you see my tongue? Use the same fast movement and breathe through the rounded tongue. The breath is called Sitali Pranayam, the breath of the nectar of life. It is very cooling. [Editor’s Note: The position of the hands is actually different; but the frequency of the movement is the same.] Move fast—one hundred and eighty circles per minute, yeah, yeah, yeah move. I am very good at it. I would say, “I pray for good mastery of it.” If you do this exercise, it can totally refresh you and take away your entire internal fatigue. Very good. See, how fast I can do it? Yeah, very easy. Both hands move underneath round and round and break the magnetic field, that’s all it is. It’s not going anywhere, it creates a magnetic field right there. It can totally take away your headache for centuries. It’s very good if you make the magnetic field on the spot, though. Move fast, one hundred and eighty times per minute creates a magnetic field between your two hands. I’ll tell you what, watch me. This is how you have to move. See how I do it. It’s very electrifying. It’s something very funny. If you do it, that’s how you do it. Not like that— otherwise you will hit your hands. Hold here; one over here and move, ahh, ahh, it’s fun. Move, move, move, move, move! Sometimes you don’t understand this breath through the rolled tongue. It’s very cooling, it’s best for kidneys and it’s wonderful for adrenals, wonderful, absolutely wonderful. It’s, wonderful for the urinary system, best for testosterone and most helpful to the pituitary. Pretty good breath, they call it Sitali, which cools everything. Learning is only possible by experience and experience is only possible by loyalty: loyalty to learning. If loyalty includes discipline, then you become learned. Come on, do not stop. Come on, come on! You think I am not looking at you, hurry up. Don’t be slow. Take your tongue out, roll it up and breathe. You have one more minute to go. Hard, work hard, work hard so you can build your experience. You know you guys think it is just fun; it really brings very good changes for your personality; it’s going to put you on the map. Getting rid of your subconscious nuisance means that you no longer commit mistakes that, normally, you shouldn’t commit. Inhale deep. Hold tight, take your shoulders back and lock it and pull your rib cage out as much as you can. Hold tight, push, push, push out and see that your



shoulder blades meet. Now come forward and exhale. Solidly exhale. Inhale deep and please apply the shoulder lock so tightly that you can be proud of yourself—tighten every muscle in the back, all the way. You know, just pull it like tug-ofwar. Come forward and let it go. Now, if you have cheated this is the last chance. Inhale deep, deep, deep, yeah, and now apply the lock tight and pull every fiber into it totally, totally! Come forward and relax. All right. You know, you get many type of headaches. It is said if you know these little things to do, you can get rid of the whole problem spontaneously. Now comes the third set, D-day, ‘the eagle must land.’ This is a very critical situation: put your hands like this please and just close your eyes. Put the left under, right over, and just balance. It’s a very good balance. Once you find a balance spot you will not have any problem whatsoever. You won’t feel tired; you won’t feel heavy; you won’t feel anything. It all fits in; the psyche holds it. Close your eyes and just have no thought. Entertain no thought. Stay in a thoughtless state. I repeat. You are in the habit of hypnotizing yourself. So please, hypnotize yourself now in a thoughtless state. Think and feel, “I am, I am not” at the same time. You are a statue of clay, dancing on the string of the breath of prana, which is granted to you for a specific period of time. You have been given light in your eyes to see the light of God; you have been given ears to hear the ecstasy of God; you have been given the tongue to speak the glory of the God. God is what created you. You have become totally deaf and dumb. Because of your ego, you are running a rat race. Therefore, from now until I ask otherwise, put yourself in a thoughtless state. Within your home become homeless. Be very loyal to yourself. Create a vacuum to be filled by prosperity and pleasure of life. Suspend yourself in a state of thoughtlessness. Steady. If you are yourself, in the state of absolute thoughtlessness, the path to prosperity, real happiness and infinite wisdom opens to you. Hang in there. No thought, go deeper into the hypnosis of no-thought. Get rid of this death of your real self,-it is like a spell of thought, thought, thought, bombarding you all the time and killing your total self. It makes your nervous system weak and eats up your neurons’ energy. It empties your brain of the vitality of the gray matter; it takes away from you the strength of the serum of the spine.


What are you doing to yourself? Hang in there with thoughtlessness, hypnotically, unconsciously to the strength of the unknown in you. Keep up, don’t give up. Fight it out—unto victory. Try, try! It’s worth it. Have patience. There is a minute and a half left, try your best. Win you must; a coward dies many deaths. Life of courage brings many victories. Come on, come on try it in thirty seconds. Put that tape on—Har Singh, Nar Singh Neel Naaraayan—that Shakti power tape. [Nirinjan Kaur’s Har Singh is played.]

Har singh nar singh neel naaraayan, Guru sikh guru singh har har gayan Wahe guru wahe guru, har har dhiayan. Saakhat nindak dusht mathaayan [Yogi Bhajan talks over the tape.] Inhale deep, go back and

lock your shoulders, lock it. Bend forward and let it go. Inhale deep, lock your shoulders again, tight and squeeze your entire fiber; bend forward and let it go. Inhale deep; do the same. Bend forward and relax. Wow! This is a very simple tape. This is the word combination of the impersonal God; listen and repeat the words. Try to reproduce them with the tip of the tongue. Copy the sound. Follow the law of sound current. Sound current and soul. Come on, come on, one more minute. Use the tip of the tongue. Inhale deep, apply the shoulder lock please. Tight, squeeze every fiber in the back, from the lowest spine to top. Hold tight, bend forward, relax. May the Long Time Sun Shine upon you All love surround you And the pure light within you Guide your way on. Sat Nam. Give me the identity, my ID, my imperial divinity, my freedom, my consciousness, my intuition, my intelligence to live my life in grace, in purity and piety, in service with kindness compassion and care. Guide me to the brightness of that light, of warmth, the love, so I can smile and make the whole world a smiling place in peace, in joy, in trust and happiness. Sat Nam.


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a

KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION KRIYA FOR THOUGHTFULNESS Yogi Bhajan • November 16, 1994

1. Sit with a straight spine. Hands are out in front of you at the navel point, palms facing each other, elbows at the side. Lock your mercury finger with your thumb (id or ego) in Buddhi Mudra. The meat of the thumb rests on the nail of the pinky and locks it down. Bend it very tightly. The rest of the fingers are straight. Make circles with the hands—180 times per minute; the hands circle toward the outside. The movement is very fast—about three times per second. 8 minutes. To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders tightly together and push the chest forward, while holding the hands in the mudra at the sides of your shoulders, palms facing forward. Release the shoulders, bend forward and exhale. Repeat twice more. 2. Curl the tongue and breath through the mouth—Sitali Pranayam—throughout this next exercise. Bring the hands in front of you, palms down, one hand over the other and begin making circles—180 revolutions per minute. Keep the hands at the level of the navel point and slightly apart. Fingertips point toward opposite elbows and the hands move in circles toward the torso; right hand moves counter-clockwise and left hand moves clockwise. 8 minutes. To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders tightly together and push the chest forward. Release the shoulders, come forward and exhale. Repeat twice more. Comments: This exercise can take away headaches. Create a magnetic field with your hands. This breath . . . it’s very cooling; it’s best for kidneys and it’s wonderful for adrenals, wonderful, absolutely wonderful, wonderful for urinary system, best for testosterone and most helpful to pituitary.

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1

2


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3. Close the eyes. Bring your hands in front of the heart center— palms down, right hand resting on the left—and just balance and be steady. 15 minutes. To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders tightly together and push the chest forward. Release the shoulders, bend forward and exhale. Repeat twice more. You won’t feel tired, you won’t feel heavy, you won’t feel anything. . . . Close your eyes and just have no thought. Entertain no thought. Stay in a thoughtless state. I repeat, you are in a habit to hypnotize yourself. So please hypnotize yourself in a thoughtless state, ‘I am, I am not’ at the same time. Create a vacuum to allow prosperity, real happiness and infinity to enter.

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4. Chant—using the tip of the tongue—with Har Singh Nar Singh by Nirinjan Kaur. 9 minutes. Har singh nar singh neel naaraayan, Gursikh gur singh har har gayan Wha-hay guroo Wha-hay guroo, har har dhiayan, Saakhat nindak dusht mathaayan To end: Inhale deep. Squeeze the shoulders together and push the chest forward. Release the shoulders, bend forward, exhale and relax.



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be happy, be neutral An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

October 27, 1992

WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THIS PLANET, we don’t know. Okay, sit down. We are going to do a job, just relax, don’t expect too much, pray for you and your luck. Is it okay? . . . We are alive, is that true? The fact is, for five thousand years—there’s a written record—we found out through many versions, through many religions, through many people, how to be happy. And the biggest lie is that we divided the world into Black, Brown and White. We did this. Though our blood is red whether we are Black, we are Brown or we are White. Our structure and look is as it is and it’s not important. You are ugly or you are beautiful or you are a thief or you are a saint; it’s not important. Try to understand. But you do not have projection and breadth of consciousness. That’s truly the ugliest thing; the curse the human has. Technically speaking, man is born to be happy and man is born to be neutral. Man is not born to deal with negative and

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positive. Because every negative is somebody’s positive, and everybody’s positive is somebody’s negative. There is an honor among thieves. So when thieves sit together, if you find six hundred thieves sitting, they are as good a congregation as if you found six hundred saints sitting. Even thieves share. They tell how they steal, how specialized they are. They are experts. I mean, they exchange their knowledge exactly as you exchange your golf tips or yoga lessons, or any lesson. Thieves also have their lessons. You ought to never undermine a reality in life. You have the capacity not to judge. Not to judge, not to grant to somebody that they are a sinner, not to blame, and not to claim. You have been made in God. So be that way. Now where you will get the capacity to be able to do that? As long as you don’t have the capacity to just be you, all the time, it won’t matter what you try, you will never be happy.




Period! There are sixty thousand therapies, over forty thousand systems. Every person has a thought and you get one thousand thoughts per wink of the eye. Each thought is a discrete unit. Pursue your thoughts and your whole life will be gone. We pursue thoughts. We don’t enjoy thoughts, we don’t feel thoughts. We cannot magnify thought. My thought is “I should be so and so.” I should be in a position to sit and magnify my thought and enjoy it and let it go. I shouldn’t have to hassle; I shouldn’t have to sweat; I shouldn’t have to work; I shouldn’t have to walk on anybody’s toes. You know what the world has created? Religious fanatics, mental fanatics and creeps. Yeah? You know what I mean? I will tell you; I will top this off with my dialogue and a little story about my experience. I knew one swamiji. He was a great man in Rishikesh. He used to be an admirer of mine and I asked him favor. I said, “I understand you are going to have sixty people come to a gathering before a Kumbha Mela [a rare gathering—only every 12 years—of every variety of religious persons and sadhus; many come from mountains, retreats, ashrams and reclusive venues] These are

rare and extremely spiritual people. And I want to be invited.” He said, “Wait a minute. First of all, you are a uniformed officer; second, you are a government officer; thirdly, you do not know anything like this, how can I do it?” I said, “Just do it.” He said, “Give me a one sound reason to do it.” I said, “This is the deal. You invite me as a great Mahan Tantric, which you know I am, but you are not supposed to say it. Just invite me as a Tantric. There is no degree required for that; there is no definition of it. And you will not be lying, because truly I am, and the rest I’ll take care of.” He said, “Well, you know what kind of people I am inviting?” I said, “I know. You are inviting those people who can talk, communicate, and play football with God. Okay? What do you want to know? You are being invited. Somehow invite me.” He said, “Okay, I’ll do it. But after that, I take no responsibility.” I said, “Fine. What responsibility are you supposed to take anyway?” So I got the invitation. I walked in and with everyone included, we were sixty two people total. There was an


exchange of spiritual realms, I should say; and God, it was a joyful television show. I wish you could have seen their discoveries and their feelings and how they talk. And they were all real. But everybody had to speak. He was going to speak last. So at four o’clock my time to speak came. Nobody knew me, except him. He just introduced me, “He is Bhajan, he comes from the northern side of India and he is tantric.” He didn’t add any titles. No “his holiness,” no “hundred and eight elements or names of God, nothing but my name. I said to myself, “well, we are on the spot.” I said, “Right now, I am having a tremendous experience of God’s presence. But I see him crying, yelling, pulling his hair, mad and he is saying to me ‘Why did you come among these idiots?’ ” I saw the face of swamiji. He was sitting like that and his eyes went like this (rolled up) and he dropped his head down to the earth, like a devil has spoken. And I said, “I see it, I am a tantric. I see it, I understand it, I fully understand it. I am asking the reason for this. And God says, ‘At nine o’clock, all these sixty-two people came here. And at four o’clock, they are still sixty-two separate people. And I am One God and they are not one’.” I said, “I don’t know what it means. I really don’t understand it. In my humble way, I’ll ask you the question, “Is God saying what He is saying? And do you hear it? And aren’t you ashamed of it?” You should have been there and seen their faces. And you should have seen the face of my friend, the swamiji. He did a wonderful job. So anyway, later on I was very loved and hugged. I was talked to and catered to by all these people. And some, I don’t even want to tell you their age. Their skin was just like an elephant’s. They had seen too many winters, many freezes, much weather of all kinds, and many many moons. Even in this divine gathering there was a gap to cross. So I ask you that question: “Do you understand the purpose of the spirit, the soul, the body, mind, tattvas, gunas? Do you understand all the knowledge in the libraries, the spirituality of religion and God? Do you understand? Do you know the fact that the God doesn’t know He is a God? He is Infinity within Infinity. And do you know you have the same capacity? Do you know that your vitality and your reality and your divinity and your infinity and your neurosis and your psy-


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chosis, whether you are an idiot or you are wise is all infinite? It’s endless? It’s a drama?” It comes, goes and then goes and then comes. In this tendency and reality, we are born as a human. We are born human to experience our infinity, so that we can be neutral in totality. In truth, nobody teaches us, nobody knows us, nobody wants us. What we are learning here is survival— nothing beyond that. And we lean on each other for survival. Somebody asked me to define love. I said love is like a tsunami which comes after an earthquake. After that nobody knows what has happened. You know? And whosoever is divine and defines love, is the biggest fool and a hypocrite. That’s what Nanak said, Thaapi-aa na jaa-ay keetaa na ho-ay. Aapay aap niranjan so-ay. - Guru Nanak, Japji Sahib

He cannot be established, He cannot be created, He himself is immaculate and pure. One line. One simple line. He cannot be established, by doing, there is nothing we can do. By itself that flawless is within His flawlessness. It can’t change. But we do not have the capacity to be impersonal in that totality. That’s why I said, “When you cannot see God in all, you cannot see God at all.” If you cannot, if you are very, very miserable and you don’t love misery, you can never love happiness either. Love is love. Love has no dimension. I was saying today, ‘Those who do not deserve misfortune cannot enjoy fortune. Those who do not desire calamity, do not know victory.’ We are born to conquer. That’s our spirit. Our mind has the capacity to get into infinity and go beyond infinity. And we have the opposite capacity to understand everything is wrong. We think everything is wrong. Look at the whole Hindu philosophy. Don’t ask me if the lotus is in the mud. You can’t separate mud from lotus and lotus cannot be without mud, right? Lotus enjoys mud, mud enjoys lotus. Is that true? You all love lotus; nobody loves mud. Now, how stupid are we when we know that they cannot be separated. If you take a coin and you rasp off one side of the face, then just try to sell it. It will only be scrap metal. In five thousand years, humanity has not understood that God Almighty is impotent, because He cannot create another

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God. Because He cannot create one single thing—God—He creates two things. He creates idiots and wise men. He creates ugly and beautiful. He creates polarities. The test is, when you see ugly, don’t go by it and when you see wise, don’t go by it. If you see wise, be wise; if you see ugly, don’t be ugly. Take care of yourself. Everything is for you. There is nothing for anybody else, for any reason. And have no argument and waste no time. You are a complete, absolutely complete, unit. If somebody’s husband is no good, a good wife should not mind it. This world accommodates thieves as well as rich people and the law of nature is that everything comes to balance. You have to understand this once and for all. You are luckiest when you are in tragedy. Right? Tragedy will eat you up or you will win over it. Think of those miserable people who have no experience of tragedy. Think, think, think, think, think! Just think. You are poor, think of those miserable rich people who can’t sleep, take sleeping pills and they are so rich. And look at that poor man [Yogiji pretends to sleep and snores.] Just watch him sleep better. We have the capacity to meet the challenge and call on our self. Once I had to travel with somebody. They said, “The guide is very sick. He’ll be available to travel with you after an hour delay.” I said, “Okay.” After an hour I went there. He hardly could dress himself. He started walking and I said, “Are you sure that you have to be our guide? If you want I can let you go.” He said, “No, I am fine. And I am very grateful to you.” And then he walked faster than us. He was tougher than us. He was fine with us. When we reached the destination, I said, “How do you feel?” He said, “I feel much healthier.” He was fine and we were dead tired!




MEDITATION: PARBATI’S KRIYA [See end of transcript for complete write-up.]

My approach tonight is very classical. I want to show you the seat of the soul. I have told you that I am starting the series because I do not want to leave you in the dark. I want you to experience things the way I experience them, not the way you want to experience them. I have nothing to do with you guys. You come here because you are in some kind of tragedy. You still deal with me, knowing me, knowing I am no good. You know what I mean? If I had been better than you, I would have been more miserable than you. And you are in a good amount of misery. You have much less width. You have no width. Thank God I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me either. So what we are going to do tonight? We will test it out: who belongs to whom. Okay? What I am going to do tonight I have already done. So don’t feel that I am in any miserable state, I am not. We are doing the Kriya which Lord Shiva taught to Parbati, his consort, his only love. You know that naked guy, Shiva, who delivers you or destroys you in the end? He is a deity and he has the most beautiful woman to relate to. She is called Paar-Bati. Bati. Bati means light. Paar means beyond light. When you say Parbati, it doesn’t mean anything to you. Paar, aparam paar, para , pavan, pavan, pavan, pavan, you understand that song, what is it? Pavan, pavan pavan pavan paar para, pavan guru, pavan guru, Wahe Guru, Wahe Guru, pavan guru. You don’t know anything; you are Western, that’s okay. I am not Eastern either you know. My east is New York and my west is Tokyo, so, I have a problem too. Paar-bati, bati, bati. Bati means light. Flame. Paar means beyond light. That’s His wife. He is called Shiva, the redeemer of sadness. When a Jewish person dies, the relatives sit “shiva” and they remove their sadness. Tonight, we are doing this. I’ll go exactly by Sutras, I am not going to add anything from my side to this:

“Thus spoke Lord Shiva: Oh Parbati,I’ll share with you the secret of my soul. Sit in a graceful posture. Impose in you the feeling of the Trishula.” Your Trishula means you are the past, you are present and you are the future. You keep doing what I am saying. I’ll translate into English as best as I can. “Impose on you the feeling of Trishula, my thunderbolt of delivery. Whosoever feels that he is the past, he is the present and he is the future makes a place for me to come in. My seat is the agiaa (ajna) chakra.” That means the Third Eye, between the eyebrows, that little place you have in the forehead. He should have said pituitary, but he was not modern back then. “In that seat is the dormant projective soul of every human. Oh Parbati, light of the eyes, it’s the gift of me. Put your eyes at the tip of the nose and see the Neelkant.” This is that blue, that little blue circle. If you really put your eyes on the tip of the nose, downward, underneath at sixty degrees, you will see a blue lagoon, you will see a blue circle. Really you will see a straight line, but it forms a circle, it’s just like a cup. And you will see the corner of the cup. You will see the “Neelkant.” “Don’t you lose, my divine love, the sight of that blue cup. This shall activate the psycho-radiance of my personal domain, which is under the domes of the heaven.” That means pineal. I am translating it for you. “Oh Parbati, the word is Infinite. And the word is the ultimate silence. Turn your giver of the word and touch your upper heaven.” It means, in English, turn your tongue up and touch the upper palate That’s all it means folks.



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“Thus, I will come in you through the fragrance of my divinity.” That means concentrate on your nostrils, ida and pingala, left and right, and let your brain’s neurons— seven layers, fourteen levels with plus and minus—regroup themselves. “Oh, Parbati! As you feel my vastness in you, be still, undisturbed, in harmony and enjoy. This is the first step to ecstasy.” Don’t forget to look at the tip of the nose and don’t look at the wrong angle. If you put your gaze at the proper angle, you will find the little blue stuff. It may be faint or it may be darker, but it is there. And then concentrate on your left and right nostril and just breathe consciously. And keep your tongue pressed upward. Turn it under your upper palate and keep your back teeth, your molars locked, and you are set. Now we will go through the time realms; and folks, if you are in a right posture, everything in you shall start changing. In the first seven minutes, I’ll remind you, because after eleven minutes, your trend shall change. But you have to stay in it and be neutral, only for the first eleven minutes. Make no move in the body. Make no move of any muscle. It is, in American, called ‘Solid state.’ Solid state is a status, which our American goods have on them. Sit in a solid state and in a perfect posture. And listen to the teachings that Lord Shiva gave to his consort Parbati. Act under those instructions. Prove to me, whether he lied or he spoke the divine truth. Don’t wink your eye, don’t move your body. For eleven minutes, I am just timing you. Don’t drop your head. This will take you to the place where God lives. Don’t try to sleep. Alert! Be alert; be kind to yourself; be alert. Learning is the will of God, not of the human. Human will is just to make an effort. Don’t discuss it, don’t expect it, don’t announce it, just be alert. You have come here by the will of God. You have come here by your will. Now you are using your will to practice the will of God. If practice is right, you shall be granted the experience of the will of God. But please don’t sleep. Stay alert. Alert, alert, alert. Be alert. Chin in, chest out, don’t be sleepy. Wow, what he is doing? Don’t sleep. Stick around folks.

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Hey, what are you doing? Commandante, put your spine straight son. If it is hurting, it is natural; it is curing. It’s a very tough thing: when you press the upper palate, all the meridians of the body go berserk, because they have to come to their original birth formation. It means they have to come to a child’s form; it means they have to come to their maximum. And if you don’t lock your back teeth and keep the spine straight, you will go to sleep faster than your sleeping can take you. Sit confirmed, sit alert, sit extremely gracefully. Don’t be alien to yourself. You want to have love and life and happiness? Be happy that you love yourself. Be alert and conquer yourself. Man jeetai jag jeet. If you conquer your mind, you are going to conquer the whole world. This is just one step tonight. You are fortunate you came. Think of those who are not here. But if you are here, then be here. You are doing very well. Now folks, you have crossed the seventh minute. Be super alert now because all the glands will start secreting. The blood chemistry will go through changes. Hello—keep your neck up. Don’t allow the posture to fall into any alteration. Still there are four minutes to go. Solidify yourself. When you put your eyes on the tip of the nose at the right angle, you will see a blue, I think little first moon, first moon lining. Stick with that. Wow, Hari, see what a great experience it is! Imagine your house is on the top of the mountain, sit like Shiva. Chin up, chin up, chin up. You are going into deep sleep, that’s not right, keep the chin up. Still sit firm. Don’t let the blue circle lose you. Steady, don’t drop your head man. For God’s sake it is just a few more minutes. If you nod your head now, I am going to put a bucket of water on your face, I can tell you right now. Make your body firm. Firm your body, firm your muscles, be in command. I need absolute command for another minute and a half. Absolute command. Absolute command with absolute self-experience. Yeah, come on, we are doing it. I wish you could see what I see. But if you don’t want to trust me then let me boast, you are in a good shape. It’s another minute now. You can make it. Solidify your posture. Concentrate on your breath. Here we go for the last leap folks. Forty-five seconds. Control yourself. Thirty more seconds. That one niche in the end is all you have to do, that will do it all. Just get ready. Fifteen seconds. Alert. Top alert, ten seconds. Get ready, inhale deep,




hold, tighten yourself with absolute accuracy! Absolute accuracy. (Student coughs persistently.) Cough, cough, cough, cough, its OK, let the body change. Let it go, exhale. Now, inhale deep, exhale deep. Inhale deep. Hold tight and zero between the eyebrows, contract. Contract. Contract your forehead. Absolutely contract. Breathe out. Inhale again, deep. Hold tight, contract. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, let it go. Relax. Now please take your fingers and press them like this— move them and your toes—move them. Underneath, move your toes and move your fingers in a circular manner and your toes, toes, toes, toes, toes, toes—because they need blood right away. Move them! Move, move! They’ll go away, you won’t even feel it, later on you will cry. Come on. Your toes, the claws, human claws they call extremities, move, move, don’t sleep, wake up. (Yogiji demonstrates toes wiggling and moving in small circles at same time.)

I am not worried about you; I am worried about your toes. You are fine. Move your toes. Move them, move them like this. You will lose them if you don’t move them, this is wrong. Move them all in one circle, like this. You see, how I move. Just like that, do them. Your toes, not mine. Okay folks, now, bend your toes inward towards the torso; and your hands are like this, bend them outward and make them as stiff as you can and breathe normally or abnormally, it doesn’t matter, but create so much tension, it will change your metabolism right now. God knows what sickness might be there, but a finger should be like this. It’s a very simple theory. It’s not something you have to do. Watch me. I am very good at it. That’s how I survive everyday. Watch this. No, no, I give you my own posture; I am not going to tell you something which I don’t know. You can’t forget to lock your molars. You may end up cutting your tongue. Tense your extremities. Three minutes—you have to stay in this posture without moving anything else. Inward, inward. Maximum inward. Concentrate. Your fingers have to be steel claws and your feet and your toes must come backward to the maximum, because that will create a lot of pressure, on the, heel, the Achilles heel, they call it; and your pituitary and your senses and sexual senses will grow up nor-


mally, it’s a very potent way to do it. It’s not a gimmick. You have done it for two minutes, one more minute left. Steady, steady, it is a steady thing. It is that big tendon, it is called the Achilles. Between the heel and your calf, turn it inward and push hard on it. It’s a direct meridian with the pineal and pituitary. Steady, breathe, be hard. Oh wow, you only have twenty seconds left, fifteen seconds more to go. Harder, harder, harder. Relax and look towards the sky and laugh loudly. (Students laugh.)

Neck up, neck up, neck up. Open your mouth, relax. You have to relax your lungs, otherwise they are under pressure. Laugh, laugh, make up a joke, laugh! Inhale deep, inhale deep. Lock your lips and go like this. Watch me. Move your head, shake your head as fast as you can (small quick side to side movements), very firmly. This will open up your entire neck. Hurry up, move, move. Relax. Now sing: May the long time sun shine upon you All love surround you And the pure light within you Guide your way on Sat Nam. This is one in the series. I am trying to not pacify you, it’ll become harder and harder. It’ll be experience after experience because we must do what we have to do. And what we have to do, we must do it ourselves. Nobody can do it for anybody else. Somebody learns, somebody shares, somebody does, somebody learns, somebody shares. That’s the process of life. Nobody is superior and nobody is inferior. Nobody is great, nobody is small. We are all in one world for one reason—happiness. And now if you care to sit and talk to each other and become human again, it’ll be nice. Please share food, as langar will be served. Sat Nam.


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a

KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION PARBATI’S KRIYA Yogi Bhajan • October 27, 1992

1. Sit in a very easy, graceful posture. Straight spine. Chin in, chest out. Your eyes are at the tip of the nose. When your eyes are at the correct angle, (about 60 degrees) you should see a little blue circle—a slice of the moon. Don’t loose sight of it. Turn your tongue and press it into the upper palate. Keep your molars locked. Watch your breath—concentrate on both nostrils (the ending points of ida and pingala) and breathe gracefully and consciously. Concentrate. Be alert. Remain absolutely still. Do not move. 11 minutes. To end: Inhale deep and focus and the brow. Hold the breath and contract. 15 seconds. Exhale. Repeat twice more. Relax.

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2. Bring your fingertips together and press the fingers in and out making circles with them. Expand and contract. Wiggle the toes, too, in a circular manner. 1-1/2 minutes. 3. Stretch the legs out in front of you. Make your hands into claws, in front of the shoulders. Flex the ankle and the toes toward your head. Stretch the Achilles tendon. Lock the molars. 3 minutes. Your fingers have to be steel claws and your toes must come backward at the maximum. Be steady.

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4. Look toward the sky and laugh with a very open mouth. Keep the neck extended and the face up. 2 minutes. 5. Now lock your lips together and shake your head very quickly. This is a very small but rapid movement from side to side. 15 seconds. 6. Talk, relax and visit each other.

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Chapter FOUR Study Questions & Projects

1. What are three effective approaches to describing shuniya to students? Why do we need to use multiple approaches? If shuniya is ultimately understood within each person individually why offer any descriptions of it at all? Exercise: Go deeply into the meditation state of shuniya. Once you have stabilized that stillness and clarity, consciously extend your awareness out several kilometers. Explore how your sensations within your own aura or energy body change. Bring it to equilibrium again. Then extend it even farther out, thousands of kilometers out. Once again sense how that inclusion of more space alters your sensations and gives you information about the world. Enter once more into a deep confirmed state of shuniya. Now extend your space out to the total infinity all at once. Become infinite and absolutely zero at the same moment. Explore your experience. Notice how trying interferes with the experience. Notice that in this state of shuniya, you are able to be that which you already are. Discussion: With your group, devise five ways that you can actually encounter a taste of shuniya in a normal, everyday life. Create five aphorisms or short phrases appropriate to post in an office environment that would help people find and remember that state as they go about their daily jobs.


2. In our normal training, to know something means receiving or acquiring something. In intuitive knowing, we both get and not get simultaneously. Many people in the West resist or misunderstand this way of knowing. To know through being and intention is a mode of knowing for which people have very few models. Three concepts often get in the way of experiencing this: nihilism, narcissism, and passivity. Why do some people confuse these concepts with the state of shuniya and intuitive knowing? How do you create experiences that help guide them pass those blocks? What does the ego have to do with this? Why is changing the body play so powerful a role in allowing this state of shuniya to emerge? Why does fear often emerge as one begins to explore the state of shuniya? 3. Explain what it means to hypnotize your self into the thought of thoughtlessness. How do we use the mind's ability to hypnotize itself in order to enter into the state of shuniya? Exercise: Write your description of how to experience the Neelkant, the blue pearl. Do the meditation of Parabati. Based on your doing the meditation on your own, what are the challenges the student might have in doing it themselves? How much of the challenge is learning how to focus the eyes and how much is learning to focus the mind? If focusing on the tip of the nose helps to control the hypothalamus, then in what ways is it helpful to first exercise the body and to do significant pranayam?


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4. What does it mean as a teacher to speak with a thunderbolt voice? This is an important concept in the art of conscious communication. In this meditation, we are asked to impose on ourselves the feeling of Trishula and the thunderbolt. It is only from there that we are able to invite in the consciousness of Shiva and the Infinite. How do cultivating meditation, the art of shuniya and the technique of the blue pearl develop the mind to be able to speak in the thunderbolt voice? What is the quality and impact of that?

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5. In a deep intuitive meditation, both the pituitary and the pineal glands are activated. How are these glands related to each other and to the experience of deep meditation? How does the state of the hypothalamus affect the relationship between the other two glands?




CHAPTER FIVE

Mental Intrigues

Mind & Meditation • STUDY GUIDE

stop your mental games An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

February 21, 1989

I AM NOT DOING A COMMERCIAL BUT I AM IN A GOOD MOOD

to teach you this class. I am going to be sixty years old this year. This is my life history. I became a Master of Kundalini Yoga when I was sixteen and a half years old. It is the youngest age at which anybody could achieve this status. If status is a lie, it is fine; if it is a truth, who cares? There is nothing to gain or lose by it. It is between a Master to a Master. After doing Kundalini Yoga and becoming a Master I went crazy and wanted to do these occult powers. I really wanted to know how the five tattvas affect a man and how they do this and that. So I practiced all that, too. It is not that I didn't learn. I learned it. I practiced it and it works. It is a truth. You can make a donkey out of anybody and make an elephant out of anybody. It is the most vicious side of the power, energy, and divinity which I ever experienced.

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I also found out that mostly people are not right. One says this, one says that; you know, it is a bizarre thing. Then I found out that spirituality and religion are the most corrupt things on the planet. And when I had that experience, they made me the head of the religion! Do you understand this huge dichotomy? I couldn't say to them, “No, I don't want it. I don't believe in it.” On the other hand I definitely knew that they used spirituality as nothing but a salesman’s shop and promising people God. Neither the man who is promising knows what God is, nor the man promised. Everything lives on a hope and it goes on. You pay me thirty dollars, I pay you twenty dollars, or something like that; money is exchanged. Religion has come down to the grassroots, to the individual. It is that bucket which goes around the church to collect the money to sustain the church, which is the compromise.




And I tell you for a fact, that in science and in art, when it comes to compromise, it is totally not real, period. When you are real, you are real, there is no compromise with your self or God. I was fortunate that I got sick. I couldn't even teach if I wanted to. Then I started looking into why I get sick. Then I realized: how can a man of my caliber and with my kind of sadhana get sick? Why? That was the question. And I found that as the doors to the Golden Temple got locked up and the blood started going, the same happened to my heart. [Editor’s Note: This refers to the tragedy from 19841988 when the Indian government ran a pogrom against the Sikhs and in the process attacked and destroyed temple buildings at the most sacred place of healing and worship for the Sikh Tradition.]

Man is a prototype, a copy, of his belief. This experience only proved it to me. Otherwise, if anybody would have told me this—and I tell you, I would not even hurt an ant but I might have slapped that man's face—I would have said, “Liar, shut up. You are just laying a number on me.” But the fact is that when I was into my illness and I experienced it, it happened. Then I started looking around at you guys. You are American? Very good. You have good sex every night. You do everything in the world. You dance. You pretend you are this, pretend you are that, when you are really just the most beastfully, commotionally and emotionally satisfying people on the planet. You can afford it. Everybody can't afford it but you can afford it. Your leftovers could feed one third of the world. That is how wasteful and irrational you are. But I feel God has given you a vast land, less population, a lot of money and you can afford to do it. It must be the karma which you can enjoy for a while. But I do understand where the pain and the problems are in life. They are not anywhere. It is a simple theory. Let us put two and two together. Soul is deep and dormant. Mind is shallow and yellow. And when I say yellow, it means cheap. Yellow journalism is a term which you all must understand. When we color over things and cheaply try to attract other people and lay a number on them—that is how it all came about. Now, should we blame people for it? No. Because the subconscious records day dreams, night dreams, thoughts, desires, wishes, and emotions. It records your own plus all the people you know who project them onto you. Now, what you do not understand is that everyone is a signal station and if a million stations send signals to you, you


shall receive them without knowing. That is the unconscious state which the mind has. And then what happens? You get bloated. Overloaded is called bloated. And then your own life starts falling apart. Whatever comes from your soul shall stay. Whatever comes from your mind has to be worked out. Whatever comes from your mind will be faster than you can understand and so shallow that you can walk into it. That is what mind does. Mind is quick. Mind is actually a contact between you and God, without you even knowing it. It can make you feel you are nothing. It can make you feel you are everything. Now within that philosophy, when the subconscious gets overloaded it starts blowing the circuits and a state of numbness is reached in your physical action. It can be mental impotency; it can be physical impotency; and it can be sensitivity into impotency, which we call, “I don't have a spirit;” “I don't feel like it.” In medical science they call it—in psychiatry, “He is psychotic; he is neurotic.” They have got a whole science about it. Then they say, “His brain doesn't work.” You know one very funny thing. I can never believe this thing—that somebody's brain doesn't work. The brain is such a highly sophisticated computer God gave to a person, if it worked out, even if a part of it could work out, it’s more than anything we have ever produced or we know how to produce. Look at the situation of the mind. You have ten trillion cells. Your body has ten trillion cells. These cells change every seventy-two hours. Old age is when they start changing from seventy-two hours to eighty hours and to eightyfive hours or more. That is all. No big deal. You know the doctor is right. We die of old age when our cells start taker longer to change; you start becoming senile, old, and capacity-wise, a little wrong. Now, ten trillion cells you have got and each cell has three parts: electron, neutron, and proton; so it means that each cell has three things to take care of it. That means thirty trillion units live in you. So you are a living combination—a living, organic combination of thirty trillion units. Watch, as per impulse, or beat of the heart, your mind receives, controls, administers and keeps the change going. It means that your mind has the capacity, per impulse, to receive, control, and administer thirty trillion messages. I mean it is simple, layman mathematics. That is how the mind is.


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Tonight, we are going to deal with this mind of ours and unload our unfulfilled dreams so we can have a little space to live. It is called jerking out the jerk in us. You know. In simple American slang English— we say, “It is too much, we can take in no more!” One day I was very funny and said to somebody, “Believe in God!” He said, “No, no, no. No belief in God. Nothing outside.” I said, “God is inside.” The person said, “If God is inside then absolutely no belief. I know what is in my inside.” If you know, I said, “Breathe.” The person breathed. I said, “How much of your left lung and right lung at this time has been filled with the oxygen and how much is the difference between the blood underneath and your air? And how much is the diaphragm pulling into you at the capacity rate to bring the air down to have the oxygenation of the blood done?” And the person said, “What? What are you asking?” I said, “Each breath means it must go deeper to fill the lungs and oxygenate the blood to make it healthy and then come out with the unwanted wastes and that is how the breathing is.” I said, “My dear person, you only breathe— remaining there is if I estimate right, a four inch distance between the air you breathe and where your blood is ready to be oxygenated; your diaphragm puts the pressure and that pressure touches it. It means you are only breathing 25% out of this. Five percent oxygen potential is oxygenating the blood and then we take vitamin E, Geritol, Vitamin D, Vitamin this, good food, etc.; but the very oxygen in your breath does not touch your whole blood. We have the shallowest breathing habits.” Mindwise, whatever we think in messages, receive in messages and take care of regarding the messages—whether those messages are done, fulfilled, or understood or analyzed or processed or progressed or rejected or accepted—beyond that they are all stored in the subconscious. Finally they start overflowing. They overflow in three ways: One is through daydreaming, which is the worst. Night-dreaming and nightmares and that kind of stuff is reasonable if it’s not to the extent that it taxes the nervous system. I don't mind if a person sleeps the whole night, but most people are not actually sleeping. He is working through a dream which is equal to sixteen hours of hard work. If a person digs a six foot by six foot by four foot deep trench during the day time at the noon of the day that is what one nightmare is equal to. Plus the

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aftershock, like an earthquake, can go on for about a week to ten days. And if it is unfortunate enough to fall within the half of the moon, meaning you are in the seventh or eighth or ninth day of the moon and you reach the eleventh day of the moon; that becomes a permanent scar. If it is your thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth day onward you are safe. And that is how body works. It is a very, very highly sophisticated system. So I thought I would just share with you a certain series in which I am going to get rid of this subconscious stuff. It is easy and you should know the art of it and science of it and experience of it, so that you can live light. These days, lots of people are selling enlightenment and meditation and lots of things. But basically you must understand you have but one power, mental power. You cannot avoid the interlock between you and the sound of the gong, because you are the byproduct of the wave and the strength of the wave. That is called light and sound. Playing the gong is an art. It took me about four to five years to perfect it. I can create the effective rhythm with it; I can play it; I can interlock it. I can see your aura and I can push you through. I don't need you for that. I mean I don’t mind if you do not meditate on me; I am going to just push you, push you through anyway. It is just like pulling the tooth out of man's mouth when the forceps are in and the dentist has the strength and the Novocain has already worked. All there is left now is to pull it out. And for that we need only one tenth of a second. If in the whole meditation today you can coordinate yourself for one tenth of a second that is all we need. After all, to burn a big heap of good, dry firewood you need one little matchstick. So, if in this whole series, little–by–little, you just give us one tenth of a second, the rest will all work out with you. That is all we need. Once that sound sinks in—where you are not hearing it—and you are getting it; it will do the work. And that is what the science is about. I am not going to make you Christian. I am not going to make you Buddhist. I am not going to make you divine. I am not making you Allah Azraheem. I do not know what Wahe Guru says. I am just trying to clean your garbage. That is all this night is about: cleaning your mental garbage. I could say other words but because I am a holy man, I can't. I love that word which you Americans have taught me. But, unfortunately I am Siri Singh Sahib and I am not supposed to say a




lot of uncouth things. I am also bound down by unwanted discipline, but I think in my religious world, they knew I was a rebel and they just tied me in to fix me. Mind. Mind. Mind. The right side of the mind is not with men. Left side of the mind is devastating because it is with the female; it makes her confused about what is right, what is not right, “I am too much, I am too little.” You know, it is a Libra balance. Have you seen the real picture of a Libra? These two pans of the balance are always upside down as if a high wind has hit it. So it is not the quality of the woman which matters, it is the balance of the woman. Unisonness of the mind, which woman has to use and the unit of the mind which man has to use, if they want to be happy and successful in life. You can be successful—not happy. That is the criteria you have to understand. I don't mean the spiritual experience. Well, I know God, God knows me. Then what? God knows everybody. If I know God knows me, so what? Big deal. Question is how much mental garbage have I got. The bulb is on whether the glass is clean or not, whether the light comes out or not. It takes that light to be able to go to others and not cheat them, not hurt them, not reject them. You know all the negative things we do to others, we do to ourselves. You do not hurt anyone; neither can you, nor do you have the power to do it. You first hurt yourself and then that hurt reaches the other person and he returns the hurt through a curse which multiplies your hurt many, many times. That is actually what happens. You might be thinking you are hurting somebody. Oh you son of so and so; oh you dog. You know you abuse and make a person look inferior and make them feel absolutely good for nothing and bring tears to somebody's eyes. You did a wonderful job, but that person will say nothing to you. Instead he will say, God make him impotent, make him blind, make him dumb. You know, God knows how many curses his mind is going to send on you. You, idiot human, living nicely, knowing kindness and compassion have created a machine of abuse for you for almost a couple of hours—and you think you have hurt somebody? You have dug your own grave, because when there is a pain, whatever comes in pain and in reaction has the force. I saw one time a very funny thing and it is true what I am saying to you. We were sitting on a bus and we were


coming toward Tampa. Somebody bought our tickets and we sat down. There was a person I know and respect; she wouldn’t sit on the one empty seat, even though the Secretary told her that she had to sit, because the person sitting on the next seat was black. Now watch this American humanity; this is something I saw and experienced myself. This woman would not sit on the next seat because the next person sitting was a black person. And finally the bus driver stopped the bus. He said, “Lady, either you sit down or you get off the bus.” So I said, “Could you? I’ll sit there and you can sit in my place.” I provided a seat to sit down. Now that person who I’m referring to was our student. Four years later she developed a disease. Half of her face became so black that even she couldn't believe it; and it was not just black only. That could have been tolerable. It was that disease— what do they call it? Acne or something like that. She had those little blackheads all over her face and there was nothing she could do. She tried creams and this and that and the other and I said, “Well, it is a day and night. You should enjoy it.” She replied, “I don't like it. My liver is bad or my kidneys are bad. I don't know what is bad but there is something wrong.” I said, “Definitely, I am the only one you don't believe. Everybody else you believe; but look which side you sat on and look which side that person was sitting.” I think the man on the bus realized what happened in his heart and got hurt. He thought, “God, if you have made me black. This woman hates me just because you made me black.” And he was just over-tanned and she was totally under-tanned. That is all it is. You know our mind does play games. Our mind automatically hates things. We are brainwashed. We have been brainwashed by religion, by society, by our social structure and by our own parents, by our own, you–name–it. We do not even see the other human as a human if in that microscope of ours he or she does not fit our number. If a rich person comes, we go and open the door. If a poor man comes we kick him out. It is all mental games. Mental games are very heavy and we play them consciously and unconsciously. Today we are trying to explain to you how your mind is loaded and how you feel it. Right? All right.


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MEDITATION: KRIYA TO CLEAR OUT YOUR MENTAL PARANOIA [See end of transcript for complete write-up.]

Let's work it out. Sit down, like a yogi, and pretend to be very real. All right. Done. Now this is the thing you have to do. Don't take the tongue totally out; just make the tongue a little loose. Have you ever done this breath? (He inhales quickly through the mouth and makes a little sound “huh.” As he inhales the tongue comes out and down then back in quickly.) Come on.

Wait, wait, it is a breath of paranoia, don't joke about it. It is a paranoia breath. You only do it when you are hit by your own paranoia. That is what you do. And I am not asking you to shake about, I am just asking you to take the paranoia breath, that is all. Don't look like the ocean birds. Come on. Before the paranoia hits you, charge it with the breath. Heavy, heavy, deep breath. It will give you oxygen. We need that red blood. Hold on, hold on. You think you have become ducks! This is not true. When you are hit by a definite attack of phobic paranoia within yourself you breathe this way because you need oxygen. You need the pranic body. That is why you—Huh! (He takes one quick inhale with a sound.) You know you breathe that way. It is a natural process. All these are natural processes, don't feel ugly about them. Do it consciously so that the lungs and the blood in one or two breath circulations become strong enough that we can do the exercise. Hurry up. Feel, feel afraid. Come on. Do it heavily from the diaphragm. Okay, okay, listen to this. You think this is a joke. If you do it about twenty times in a day you shall never have nightmares. It is not a joke, this breath. If this breath is practiced two things will never hurt you: One is the hysteria, the other is paranoia. It is a yogic breath. You only do it in a natural emergency. We are asking you to do in a conscious emergency. That is what we are asking. We are asking you to breathe the same way. Normally, in three minutes, your aura should totally change; but you are just practicing it, you are not doing it. I want the breath to be done by the pull of the diaphragm. (He demonstrates a powerful quick pull from the diaphragm.) That is what I want. I want it to hit deep. (After students practice a minute he stops them and explains.) You know one thing. I know why people do not practice Kundalini Yoga. Now I real66

ize. It practically does not seem so sophisticated. It doesn't suit you. Now who wants to sound like a duck? But that is what you do when you are in those situations. God bless you, that situation may never arise but if it does arise, it can take so much energy away from you that you cannot even relate to it. But if at this time you force the diaphragm deeper and let the air come deeper, in few minutes we can proceed. Come on. (Students resume briefly.) That is good. Enough. Enough. Now come on, just here, don't touch anything. (He demonstrates a quick breathing through rounded mouth. Equal in and out, very fast.) Come on quick fast, you will feel light-

headed in seconds. Come on quick. That is how forceful it should be. (Does it about 30 seconds as part of the first exercise.) All right exercise number two. One, two, three exercises. Hand with sun finger like this. It is called Ravi Mudra. Ravi Mudra and hands like this. Three fingers extended and sun finger in Ravi Mudra. Like this. See this and here we go. Only fingers over fingers. Not the whole hand. It is very light and balance is very difficult. Just keep it and do it faster than you can afford to do. Do it fast. It will give you something to understand; and put that twisted finger, the side finger, straight. Try to make it just like this. It goes like this. This one. This is the Saturn finger. It will bend automatically but if you just consciously do it and do it like that it will work out perfectly. Fast, please move. We are just sending a message to the brain—brain doesn't know what. What is a mudra? Mudra is a physical connection that forces the neurons to move or not to move in the brain, to create patterns; it activates them to think, what is going on? Fast, fast. You know my problem is? If I do not give you a good class you are not going to come tomorrow. You know what I mean? And if you don't come tomorrow and I do not do a good job and then a week later you are going to hit the wall; and it is not required. The thing is to get rid of the junk, stay clean, get going, enjoy your life. Powerful! I mean powerful, fast. Quick. Quick, quick. Could you stand up and show them how quick you can do and that they are human beings too, and at least they can learn from you. (Student demonstrates how fast the hands can rotate.) They only think they know. Is it possible? This is what I want. Come on. No he is not joking, he is really doing it, I can understand. Come on, come on, come on.




Your nostrils will start having pressure on ida and pingala if you really do this exercise faster. You will create a very impulsive state here right on the both sides where ida and pingala starts. That is all we want. We don't want to harass you. Actually we want that pressure. The moment the nose starts showing a little red color in the aura. That is what we want. Keep up just a little more. We want a light pink color, it is not right yet. Hurry up, hurry up. You are cheating. This is not good. I don't have time. I have called for my hot pizza and I have to eat it at five minutes to nine, whether you take the class or not is your problem. Hurry up. Don't waste my food. Come on, quick. I have ordered today from California Pizza kitchen a special pizza with basil on it, so I mean business. (Students laugh.) Come on quick. Even sometimes I tell them what to do. What kind of teacher I am, I don't know. Hurry up, hurry up. Ha, ha, ha. Hurry up. Fast. Just become a little more tense and that will work. I want the big nose. They call it clown nose. Your nose will become big like this on your aura and that is all I want. It is only little yet. It is not working. Hey you! Come on blue turban. Hurry up. Fast. The bad people who sit over there, they think I can't see but aura is above you. Little more. See, he is doing it. Watch it. Okay inhale deep and please lock your hands like this in the heart center and start meditating. Inhale deep, close your eyes. Tight!! See, even this sounds. (The gong vibrates from the force of his command voice.) Tighten those hands for God's sake. Don't let them go. (Exercise three.) Tighten them to the best. Close your eyes and from the closed eyes look where you feel the tightness of the hands. Angle your eyes that way toward the center of energy you have created with those tight hands. Tight. And angle it from the closed eyes. And get vast, vast as the sound of the gong pulls you out of your body. (Yogi Bhajan plays the gong.) Keep the grip. Tighten the grip. It will carry you automatically if you keep the grip tight and optical nerve seen through the closed eye. Remember you have got to go through the journey yourself. Tighten it, tighten the grip! Relax the grip, relax the grip. Let the grip go. (Continues gong more lightly and deeper sound.) Let the body now relax with it. Keep meditating. Please let the grip go. Separate the hands. Body will automatically adjust to the changes. Please let it happen. Relax. Striking time was two minutes, projection time was at the three and a half cycle capacity, result


between sixty and seventy percent. (Has assistant find Har singh nar singh, neel narayan, guru sikh guru sikh har har gayan by Nirinjan. Music is played briefly then switched to “Beloved” by Singh Kaur. This song is very etheric and light.) [Editor’s Note: This is a case where he searches for the right tape to use based on aura. Selects Har Singh then switches energy to deep relaxed projection.]

Let the body adjust and relax. Mentally go with the sound but don't utter a word. Please start doing the breath of fire as powerfully as you can. Quick, quick, quick, use the diaphragm. Open up the cells of the lower lungs for God's sake. Live full. Give the energy you need. Very good. Put your hands up and clap as powerfully as you can, powerful, powerful. Fast, fast. Move faster than that. Come on for God's sake. Move fast. All right, all right. Thank you and move those three fingers and make the circle again as we did. Remember that. The sun finger and those three fingers, move fast. Because you understand it is not good to create energy and not then circulate it into the body. Then it is wrong. Return to normalcy. Keep going. Come on, you have done very well. I said, “You have done well, you believe me. If I said, you have done bad, you believe me.” No, no that is not. Move fast. You don't understand. Time is very, very important factor in this. I don't want to point to somebody and say, “It is a perfect aura.” For just a flip of a minute the pressure on that hand lock was loose, for just one second. I mean that is the problem. Fast, fast, fast. All right relax the hands and get to that fast breath we started. (Breathing through the mouth quickly as before.) Now you will do it fearlessly I can understand. Come on—all the way from the tailbone. There is a tailbone underneath. Pull it from there. Hold on, hold on, you have got to move your tailbone which is the first, lowest vertebra and if you pull it really you will feel there something. Come on. Okay, okay. Diaphragm, diaphragm—move it. And relax. Now, I do not know what I have done and you do not know what you have done; but just go in your mind about thirty, forty minutes back in time before you did this, that you can do, and just feel yourself and find out how you feel now. Make no concession to me. That’s how much it takes to clean your garbage. It is an initiation to get into the house and clean it. Tomorrow we will see, what the garbage collectors will come and get. (Yogiji laughs.)


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You know, we have initiated it only with the idea that you will go through it for a day. When you come tomorrow, do me a favor, do not have anything in your stomach except liquids. I will personally ask you—I don't know how regular you are—but I will expect you to go on some kind of mild laxative so that in your capacity as a human being you may be reassured that you are clean. It is important. We are going through this series on a relationship of faith. You trust me. I trust you. You come here to learn from me. God has given me the privilege to serve you. I don't play that game of, “I have got you and you have got me.” You don't get me; I don't get you. It is just a simple privilege to serve you; and it is a privilege to honor that somebody touched me and I learned it and I enjoyed it and I still recall and relish those experiences. Capacity of the man is not that he can catch God by a tail. Capacity of man is not that he can create miracles. Capacity of a man is not that he is most successful; he is beautiful; he is a multimillionaire. He is president of the whole world and world bows to him. Capacity of a man depends on two things—two things. When it is impossible, according to that person, when it is impossible, his heart is kind and his head is compassionate. There is nothing beyond that. Heart is kind. Kindness and compassion are the two things which guarantee your strength. There is no such thing as God. It is a gimmick if you produce it, anyway. It is a reality if you dispense it in a simple way. You must be kind and compassionate when it is absolutely by all standards not possible. Do you understand what God is? God is not twenty hands and sixteen legs and an elephant nose and Allah lives on seventh story and God lives on thirteenth story and Ram lives under the backyard. All this is just to teach us that A is apple, B is book, C is cat, D is dog. Neither D is dog nor dog is D. It is a learning process. Graduation? When do you get your PhD? When by all standards of your capacity, your intelligence, your intuition, your ego, your identity, it is impossible, and you are kind at heart and compassionate at head— you have found God. Otherwise you are Mr. Bogus and you are hocus-pocus and you talk religion and reality and you read books and you lecture. You do everything! You have a meditation practice and you have seen the Avtaras and you have seen the Samskaras and you have seen—you know—it is all jerk yoga. It has nothing to do with anything.

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Yoga is the union between man and God, within the God and within the man; and there are no two opinions about it. But the test of it, after all, everything has a test, an examination, the test of it is when the time hits you, time and space— time hits you and space fixes you—at that time if your answer is kindness from the heart and compassion from the head, there is no saint greater than you; there is no God but you; and there is no truth but you. These are the virtues of an ordinary grassroots human being. You can tell me I am idiot, thank you. You can tell me I am wisest, thank you. You tell me I am a sage, thank you. You tell me you are nothing, or everything, it doesn't make sense. That is all it is about. If you are in love and you are not kind and you have a romance and you are not compassionate, you are just an animal. The problem with me and you is that I must make you understand that the problem is not between you and somebody—the problem is you and within you. Problem? I have nothing to do with who does what to you and what you do to them. This is not an idea. The question is: God made you. God made you. He made you rotten or he made you the best. He couldn't do better than this. So you are the best identity and psyche created by God. You are a prostitute or you are a goddess. You are the holiest and you are the most unholy. That has nothing to do with the circumstances. You are what you are and then within you, what you are. No questions asked. There are two things which shall totally test you. It is time and space. At a certain given time, at a certain space or in certain environments, when by your standards, not by God's standards or my standards or anybody standards, but by your standards it is impossible, at that time if you are kind at heart and compassionate at head, then you have already found God. Whether you mend tires or you run 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It makes no difference. The fulfillment is yours. Everything is within you. If God would have wanted something outside of you, he should have created something outside of you. He couldn't. He didn't because he doesn't know better. It is all within you and each one of you. How rotten you are or how great you are, you have that capacity to experience. [Editor’s Note: Video ends here. Remainder of lecture is edited and provided from the archived transcript.] You know we carry

tons of garbage in our head and we do not know what we are carrying. Only later on things fall apart and then we say,




“I don't know.” The first time in United States when somebody told me, “I don't know,” I had the shock of my life. I am telling you honestly. I did not know before that that a person can answer like that. You are really free people, absolutely loose. All you have to say is one thing, “I don't know.” Then you think there is nothing anybody can do to you. What you are really saying to another person is “Be dead.” That is all you are saying. When a person does not communicate or communicates in a vernacular language of his own mind or choice in which he does not communicate; it exactly means one thing only, “Be dead.” It doesn't mean more, it doesn't mean less. And I think on average during the day I hear it five to ten or twenty times. “I don't know.” And they say it with such a style. There is a friend of mine in India. He wrote me question on health. I said, “I am very glad to see you” and all that. The letter came through a personal friend. He never thought that my secretary would even give me the letter. I said, “Okay.” He asked me, “What you have learned in the West? What is the best thing you have learned in the West? Please tell me.” I wrote on the letter itself, on the other side of it. I said, “These people are freer than free will itself. All they have to say is, ‘I don't know,’ and they get out of everything and anything. It is very difficult to look at them and still smile. Thank God, I have kindness and compassion as the very maximum part of me.” I have lived through it. When I came to this country I was almost forty years old. I have never heard in my life any human being saying, “I don't know.” I mean it is impossible, it can't be imagined that a person doesn't know. What can


he not know, when every question has an answer in it? If somebody is asking you, “Do you love me or you don't?” Just say “I don't.” But you say half and half, maybe, sometimes not. You can say something. The answer comes out as, “I don't know.” Will you go to dinner with me? “I don't know.” Will you call me tomorrow? “I don't know.” When they say that just watch their face. Sometimes it looks like a monkey, sometimes it looks like a bear. You will find one very specialized animal exactly coming through their face. I mean, I am not kidding. It is reincarnation. People ask if there is a reincarnation or not, I don't discuss it. I discuss reincarnation like this; don't talk to her, she is a snake. Well there is a reincarnation right there. You don't have to look at a snake and determine that it’s a snake. A person is being called a snake because of their behavior, their habits, their treatment and all that. No, no, that all is not needed. All that is needed is two things, compassion is your art and kindness is your science. And then you can get your PhD in sainthood. You have to process yourself first by cleaning, cleansing, marbleizing (adding marble to a temple to honor its sacredness), lifting your values up and then lifting yourself up. Take it or leave it, it is your choice I do my best. May the long time sun shine upon you. Guide your way on to your homes and I am going to go to my pizza party because I have called the little ones. I just wanted to play with the kids, First I play with these kids, you are divine kids, and they are super divine kids because they are real kids. So see you tomorrow at about seven forty-eight or something. Good night.


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KRIYA

MIND & MEDITATION • STUDY GUIDE KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION TO CLEAR OUT YOUR MENTAL PARANOIA Yogi Bhajan • February 21, 1989

1&8

1. Sit in meditative, yogic posture. Stick out your tongue—not all the way— just relax the tongue. With the diaphragm, strongly exhale through the mouth over the relaxed tongue. This is called Paranoia Breath. This is a heavy, deep breath from the diaphragm. 1.5- 3 minutes. Comments: Feel afraid! Do it heavily from the diaphragm. You think this is a joke. If you do it about twenty times a day you shall never have nightmares. It is not a joke—this breath. If this breath is practiced two things will never hurt you. One is hysteria, the other is paranoia. It is a yogic breath. You only do it in a natural emergency. We are asking you to do in a conscious emergency. I want it to be done by the pull of the diaphragm. When paranoia hits you, hit it with this breath. 2. Open your mouth and do Breath of Fire through a rounded mouth. Very quickly and forcefully. 30 seconds.

2&9 3. Bring you hands into Ravi Mudra—ring finger and thumb together. Other three fingers are straight and open—stiff. Now circle the hands around each other in front of the chest. Only the fingers move over each other—not the entire hand. Move as fast as you can. 4 minutes. To end: Inhale deep, close your eyes and lock the hands at the heart center. Comments: Your nostrils will start having pressure on ida and pingala, if you really do this exercise faster. You will have a very impulsive state here, right on the both sides where ida and pingala starts. That is all we want. Actually we want that pressure and the moment the nose starts showing a little red color in the aura. I want the big nose. They call it clown nose.

3&7

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KRIYA

MIND & MEDITATION • STUDY GUIDE KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION TO CLEAR OUT YOUR MENTAL PARANOIA

4. Meditate with the hands gripped at the heart center. Right hand over left, grip tightly. Eyes are closed and focused at the hands. [Gong is played.] 7 minutes.

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5. Relax the hands down and continue to meditate to the gong. The body will naturally adjust itself. [Music is played over the gong for the last 5 minutes: Singh Kaur’s Beloved God.] Total: 8 minutes. Mentally go with the sound but not the words. 6. Begin Breath of Fire. 30 seconds. Now begin to clap the hands over the head—fast and powerful! 30 seconds. 7. Repeat Exercise #3. 1 minute. 5 8. Repeat Exercise #1: Powerful Paranoia Breath. Move the tailbone. Pull it. 1 minute. 9. Repeat Exercise #2: Breath of Fire through rounded mouth. 15 seconds. 10. Relax. Recommendation: Drink juice and liquids after this meditation. No solids. Also drink lots of liquids on the following day. Comments: This meditation is to jerk out the jerk in you.


6


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Chapter FIVE Study Questions & Projects

1. Comment, in your own way, on the quote by Yogi Bhajan: “I do understand where the pain and the problems are in life. Let us put two and two together. Soul is deep and dormant. Mind is shallow and yellow.” This could be a painting, a poem, an essay, or simply an insight. Don’t limit your mode of expression in reflecting what this statement means to you. 2. Again, comment on this quote from Yogi Bhajan: “Whatever comes from your mind will be faster than you can understand and so shallow that you can walk into it . . . that is what the mind does. Mind is quick. Mind is actually a contact between you and God, without you even knowing it. It can make you feel you are nothing. It can make you feel you are everything.” Give an example of how this applies to you personally in your life. What does Yogiji identify as most significant for practical living and happiness in this quote? 3. The use of the gong is a central technique in Kundalini Yoga. What cautions in the use of the gong do you need to abide by as a teacher? In your experience, how does the gong interlock the mind? Just as each language has an innate grammar and meaning, so do the language of the gong and music have a grammar and impact. What are the best ways for you to learn and be sensitive to the syntax, grammar and meaning of the sound of the gong? If the teacher plays the gong without such sensitivity, what is the impact of the sound?

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4. Yogi Bhajan informs us that the mind always plays games with the ego. Our mind is subject to the many thoughts generated automatically by our physiology and our innate drives. If we watch the thoughts as they flow through our mind, we become aware of how many are put there by society, parents, the Cosmos, and other people. As he puts it, we are sensitive and we are brainwashed. Observe your own mind in meditation for 15 to 31 minutes. What thoughts and feelings are projected by your mental games? What things do you find you automatically dislike or hate? What things do you absolutely feel you must have? Think of somebody that you know. Meditate on them briefly and sense your own sensations about them. Then meditate deeply and noticed each of your impulses and mental games but don't react to them. When you feel very steady and clear under the onslaught of your subconscious mental games, meditate again on that same person. What changes in your perception of that person? 5. We use many techniques of meditation in our tradition of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. We do sit very still and calmly as many people expect of yoga and meditation. However, we also do such things as Paranoid Breath. In that exercise we are active, provocative and stimulating. Explain why such techniques are so effective. When you practice this technique and then go into deep stillness, how does it differ from simply sitting and becoming still? How does this relate to our nature in which we have polarity, unity and infinity? Some people like these techniques, some don't. As a student, should you only choose those meditations that you like? What special benefits do you gain in the practice of meditations which are inherently provocative? How can they serve you in your everyday life?




6. One concept of meditation is that it cleans out the garbage of the subconscious. Another concept of meditation is that it is the capacity to use compassion in your life. An especially provocative concept of meditation is that it is essentially the union between the human and God both within the God and within the human. Is it enough just to meditate on being compassionate? Is it enough to cultivate this positive neutral emotion? Is it enough to clean out the garbage of the subconscious? How do these three orientations relate to each other in the fullness of what we mean by meditation and being human? Exercise: With your partner or in your group, have someone ask you questions about how you feel; about your opinion on things that you are both familiar and unfamiliar with; about how you perceive them, the person asking the questions. In each case, respond with a simple phrase: “I don't know.” Pause meaningfully and with sensitivity between each question. Continue on as the questioner poses 10 to 15 questions in all. Then become still for a moment. Sense within yourself what happens to you and your experience of yourself as you continue to say: “I don't know.” Now consider what Yogi Bhajan has taught us about our natural ability to be real with ourselves and to use our intuitive knowledge in each moment. Discuss how it feels to continually say “I don't know” and why Yogi Bhajan was so insistent that we not make this a mental or emotional habit in the face of the challenges of our life.



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CHAPTER SIX

The committed Mind: Effective Action & Happiness



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develop your mental strength An Experience with Yogi Bhajan

September 12, 1989

THE SUBJECT IS VERY FINE, THIS WEEKEND. The subject is “Getting it together and your mental strength.” We as people take certain things as automatic, such as breathing, the heart beating, circulation, the brain computing, body developing, getting sick, getting well. For as much time as we spend on our physical body, we spend very little in proportion to our mind. To the Western world to meditate is a very, very, new thing: Why meditate? Why do we have to sit down? It’s very difficult. It is so difficult that for the past twenty years, I have met a brick wall. In the West, nobody understands that meditation is just taking a bath in the morning. Why take a cold shower? Why not hot water when it is available? We are Americans. Oh, we know you are Americans. That’s not what we are talking about. The fact is that when you take a cold shower in the morn-

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ing, the blood runs from inside to outside to defend the body temperature, which flushes the capillaries and keeps you young. A cold shower is to maintain youthfulness, that’s what a cold shower is for; and a cold shower is not one minute; it takes about half an hour. Stand there and keep on massaging until you become hot. Otherwise, don’t take a cold shower. Otherwise it’s useless, and defeats the purpose. Take a cold shower, get hurt, massage your body, go again, get hurt less, massage your body, get hurt again, a little less; it will take three to four times depending on your circulation. One cold shower a day can keep the capillaries open. And then, afterwards they say a shawl has to be on the shoulders, around the neck, and wrapped all over; and it should be warm, then you sit with crossed legs. The Jews used to know about the importance of the shawl. The yarmulke and the




shawl have become so small, but at one time they knew the significance of being covered. What does that do? Not much, but it takes all the blood from the outer areas to the inner organs and strengthens them. So it is a very nurturing situation for the body, mind and soul. But it is the mental strength we talk about mostly; and if you go to all the spiritual traditions, there are one or two hidden ways to develop mental strength. Jews have Kabala and the Menorah meditation, which is called “Traatik,” which they don’t know. I have taught it to rabbis. They say, well, it’s a Menorah, you know, we burn candles, we pray. Christians burn candles in church; they don’t know why they are burning them. Why are you burning candle wax, what for? For light. What does it have to do with a person? Why do you burn a candle and waste money? For light? Yeah, those days, there was nothing; we used to burn candles, it’s understandable. And we used to have a candelier, now we call it chandelier. We put thirty, forty candles, bring it down and pull it up and let it burn and at night, we put them out. Now it’s a luxury—switch on, switch off. And sometimes we even have electric candles. But the strength of the mind which we are very proud of is not in the body, and not in our knowledge. It is not what we know; it is not what we have. Then what is it? It is in switching gears from a negative mind to a positive mind to a neutral mind. It’s a very simple process. If a person does not train himself or herself in those gears, life is lost. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Sikh or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew; it doesn’t matter if you are a millionaire or you are a pauper. It doesn’t matter whether you are beautiful or ugly—that doesn’t matter either. You are wise or foolish— that doesn’t matter either. If you do not know how to switch those three gears and you happen to be wise and powerful, you will do more damage than anything else. You will be more dangerous. Can you imagine a man driving a car and getting stuck in fourth gear and that’s it? Can you believe how miserable that would be? Or once you start a car, you get into reverse gear and there is nothing you can do about it? Can you believe what that can do to you? Can you believe, if an airplane with five hundred people tries to go upward and instead it goes nose down and you have no way to stop it? Every accident in your life, any destruction to you or to any person because of you, is because you are only using


your God given gift of the negative mind. God gave you the negative mind, that’s the first mind you deal with. That is your initial mental strength. The negative mind tells you, “Uh-oh, watch out, there is danger for you”—that’s it—creating ideas and doubts, which the mind reinforces. The intellect gives you thoughts and the mind reinforces the negative thoughts, it’s the job of the negative mind. Without that, no human being can live. It is a requirement to be negative. It’s not that because God gave you right of life and as long as you have the right of life, you should only think negative. First thing is to think negative. Is that all? Yes for majority of the people, 95.6 percent of people think negative and get struck with it. That’s how we live. Then to get rid of the negative mind, its uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, we have to drink, we have to dance, we have to socialize, we have to take crack and cocaine, we have to drink more, smoke marijuana, have sex. Ninety-nine point nine percent of all our activities are to get rid of the negative mind. Yet we must also keep on developing it, it is a God given gift, it’s a must in life, also. That’s part of our mental strength. How is it a strength? When it is used with the other parts of the mind—positive to neutral—when the negative mind tells you what is negative, can you ask the positive mind what is positive? No, most of the time without training, the subconscious will take up all the fears and the complexes to tell you the negative mind is right. Everybody gets lost in this game. That’s why there are divorces; that’s why you can’t love; that’s why you rape each other; that’s why you call each other names. The whole world is based on this simple subconscious reinforcement. They call it a mental reinforcement. Negative mind tells you negative things; positive mind puts up everything negative from the subconscious, from the memory and says, “Wait a minute.” We have two witnesses: the subconscious and memory. You start to remember things: in 1976 this happened; you know, in 1932 it was in the newspapers; and you know, 200 years ago, in the history of United States, I read that something like that happened, and so on. You go on reinforcing the negative mind with memory and the subconscious. Unfulfilled dreams, unfulfilled records of your life, they join together with the negative mind and reinforce it and that’s the only use of the positive mind you have. Positive mind is not meant to touch the subconscious.


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Anybody whose subconscious memory is related to the positive mind is unswervingly negative. And that’s why the majority of us are negative. Your mind shows you, “This is negative,” then what is the other side of the coin? That’s the positive; the positive mind. After seeing both sides of the coin there is one more step. Without any help from memory and the subconscious there is a third part where you have to go: it is called the neutral mind. What should you do? You cannot do anything in life by negative mind or positive mind, by negative thought or by positive thought, by negative emotion or positive emotion, you can’t do a thing. You can’t move. Instead first, don’t move, be still and complete the process, the study. And to complete that entire study, you only have nine seconds. If you cannot conclude the entire mental strategy in nine seconds and be absolutely, actively prepared for it, that part of the confrontation of life, thought, form, situation or facet has been lost. Have you seen certain people? You ask them question, “What is this? I am talking to you, what is that? Can you not talk to me?” Hum, that’s it—nine seconds are gone and it is lost! Whatever reply comes to you after that will be a lie. It will be in self-defense and it will be totally to save face for the situation at that time. Don’t we all do that? Yes, we do. That’s why with all the wealth, all the richness, all the clothing, all the love, all the sex, all the drinks; with everything, with every religion, with biggest church in the world and synagogue and temple, the Yogis, the Swamis, the Priests, the spiritual teachers; the courses, and seminars, and colleges, universities; we are all sick because we have not learned how to have our mental transmission—how to switch through the three minds. Plus, there are eighty-one areas of the mind which work at the same time: mental integration, mental correlation, mental alternation, mental speculation, mental penetration, many mental parts and facets. Eighty-one areas work at the same time. The mind and its functions is not a small game. It’s a reality of life. It is what defines us as human. The human is very unexplored, virgin territory. The human mind has not been touched. The human brain is being found out now; they talk about it, explore it and see it with new scientific tools. In all this there are certain things in the human mind which meditation can do and do exceptionally well. All the people I have seen so far in my life come to me

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and say, ‘Oh, in meditation, I enjoyed myself, it was so blissful.’ You know what I say inside, “Oh, God.” [Yogi Bhajan shakes his head]. I don’t want to say that word because I am a holy man, but you understand, it starts with an ‘S’, because no meditation can really just be beautiful, wonderful and blissful. You know what meditation is? Meditation is like cleaning the cesspool. Have you seen a cesspool? Have you gone to where the city sends all used up things, its waste? Meditation is opening up the lid on the cesspool and cleaning it out. All perpetual thoughts, unused perpetual thoughts in the subconscious, all samskaras, penetrating thoughts of the past, all focal and vocal thought created by the galaxy itself, all that which acts together on you, you deal with it meditatively and clean yourself out by using a mantra. Negative thought is this way (Yogiji indicates a minus sign), mantra goes that way (Yogiji indicates a vertical dash that crosses the minus sign), cuts it, make it a plus. Finally, after a long, long habit of meditation, the negative thoughts can be rinsed out very clearly. You know you get off of the toilet seat, then you press the lever and in a minute everything goes out with the water. Your bathroom is clean. There is no other remedy for the mind than meditation which is just like that bathroom in everyone’s house. Meditation is nothing but taking a mental shower, cleaning yourself, and answering the call of nature with a mantra. Answering the call of nature, that’s mantra. And what is mantra? Doesn’t matter what happened or how negative it may be, a man will say, Wahe Guru, Wahe Guru. It is irrelevant what he is going through. You can say anything for this, Sat Nam, one, seven, take any word, it doesn’t matter. You can redirect your mind and its thoughts. For the full impact on your subconscious, pick that one word which you think has the vibration that can control your five tattvas and correlate to your intensified life and relax it so that you can understand your life. If it does this, it is called mantra: the resounding sound of self-esteem—resounding sound of self-esteem. Mantras are not something you can just pick up. In the west they say, if you repeat, “one, one, one,” that is a mantra. Yes, The sound Ek is a mantra. The Sanskrit/Punjabi sound Ek is a mantra we translate into “one.” But try to understand how it works. If you don’t take a bath, for a long time, say a couple of weeks you are in trouble. If you don’t go to the bathroom, you get constipated, or




you can’t even urinate and there are no urinals around, what state would your physical body be in? Now, just imagine that is your mental state. You can’t give yourself that sense of ease you seek; and you can’t clean yourself. It is that inner stink which makes life unfulfilled and miserable and that is where everybody goes berserk. You feel emptiness, you feel unhappy, you feel angry, anger makes you numb, you react, you become revengeful, you get upset and you lay your stuff on one another. You become hysterical, you have nightmares. Then your life is like one long class: you love, you promise, it is not good, then you promise it is good, then you say, I will do it, then you don’t do it. Every weakness in your mind is because you are not in touch with your neutral mind. Neutral mind is when you are not bound down by the negative force or the positive force, then you are the force. If you are looking for God, there is no such thing! It doesn’t matter how religious you are, you have no real touch of God, no experience, until you become neutral. In the face of negative and positive vibrations, you remain neutral. When the pair of the opposites does not affect you and a higher altitude is received from infinity and the personality becomes so dominant and so radiant that one can understand, “Within all, All is, and the effectiveness of all becomes One,” that’s God. It is not what you think God is. I have met a lot of people. I have not wasted my life. I am very happy about what I have gone through. Yes, suffering, hardships, negativity, slander, insults, abuse, that’s all the experience of earth. Compare it with the joy of uplifting people, elevating people, making them happy, helping them plan, helping them to neutralize their depression and make an impression so that they can have happiness in their life. That’s worthwhile. That’s the worth. You do not need an outside enemy; you have your own nightmares, your own fears, your own insecurities, your own aggressiveness. You don’t even have to worry. And some of you in the Western world, I have realized, and now also it is same situation with the Eastern world, you believe that money can buy everything. However, money cannot buy meditation. Money cannot buy that experience and without that experience you are nobody. You will wobble. How many of you have had a wobbling car experience? When it wobbles you want to fix or change your car very soon, yes? Does


anybody have an old car? No, you can’t even enjoy the joke. If you drive a wobbling car, you turn your steering wheel and drive one direction the car goes the other way; it has its own situation going on. And it shakes like an old man. And the Guru describes this state like that of an old man: Sir kampio pag dagmagai, nain jot tay heen - Guru Tegbahadur, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, p. 1428

The eyes can’t see, head shakes and body shakes and hand shakes Sir kampio pag dagmagai: feet go one left other right and the man is still walking, feeling alive. It is unfulfilled. But here, you think you are strong if you are physically strong. You are not strong mentally, and your mental clarity is not there. Normally you want gem quality in everything. Yet your mind is the foggiest mind . . . Es mann ko janam janam ki melh lagay kala hoya sa. “This mind has come to the court of blackness and blackness and blackness; it has no clarity to see.” Human life is given to see through that gem of the mind and see through the light of God. The Menorah, in which there are lit candles, is the symbol of that. That is the mental strength. With mental strength you can process a thought. All right, this is my negative. Now, what is the positive? And this is the positive of this negative. What is neutral? This is the neutral of the negative and positive. Now, the majority of people who cannot think right and get struck with the ideas of their negative mind are very rude in their conversation. They cannot understand that rudeness and abusive language is only made to wake-up somebody, not to curse somebody— it has a positive use. Abuse is a shocking language. It can only be used when somebody is totally deliberately asleep and you are interested in waking him up. A mother does it to a child, a teacher does it to a student and God does it to humanity. It is just a thunderbolt, lightning, like a storm: This Mother Nature has a language which we cannot even understand. The earth starts shaking, there are earthquakes, destruction—it is nothing but to shake you up. They say, symbolically, there is an ox. On the two horns of that ox are the negative and positive, negative mind and positive mind.


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The earth stands between these two horns, a ball. And when the ox gets tired and falls onto his forelegs, he shakes the horns and the earth trembles. Whether there is an ox or not, we don’t care. Whether there are horns or not, we don’t care. The fact is, the earth trembles. And when the earth trembles, there is an earthquake. Go and watch the history of San Francisco, see what happened there. Do you know in your life, within every two and a half hours, by the change of the dominant nostril, there is a small earthquake—about three point five, four point five, five point two? Did you know that? Every human being goes through turmoil and earthquakes in their behavior within the space–time of two and a half hours because after two and a half hours the nostril changes. You don’t notice, right? You don’t even know. It’s true. Your behavior pattern, if you do not know how to change gears to the neutral mind, shall give you an adverse attitude in your projection within two and a half hours; you will be out of gear, out of rhythm, out of harmony and out of self-esteem, self-thought, self-respect, selffulfillment and self-confidence. Everything positive within the self will become shaky within you. People normally say, ‘Oh, because I was greedy; oh, because I was not thinking; oh, that’s not true.’ These are only our expressions. For the negative mind to work for you in a positive way, it must be brought through to the neutral mind. Meditation does not mean that we will get rich and we are going to shake hands with God. What does that mean if it happened? Nothing. If God shakes hands with me every morning, what happens? I suddenly get sixteen fingers? What is all this about? Man was told that God is infinite. Man was told there is one God, the creator, because man is the creator. So he was told not to be a multiple creator, him and God, and be diversified, but be one creator and to join in unisonness. The human being has to work it out. When the pair of opposites ceases to work on a man and affect him, then that man knows the oneness of Oneness and that unisonness is what the God experience is about. That is the mental strength. When the relevancy of the centripetal force and centrifugal forces coordinate and do not create any hiss of the sound and stir of destruction, man finds the total field. The non-dual, neutral mind senses the infinite. And the value of that? There is a breeze and fragrance and

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divinity and song and music heard: it is the harmony and the music of All that all is. Call on it anyway you like: call it in poetic form, call it in a medical form, call it in a mathematical form, call it in a religious form, these are all expressions. The mind has to be neutral. Otherwise, you don’t have a mind and you cannot mind your own business and you cannot get peace of mind, if you have no neutral mind. The idea will then be, you start a fire, put wood on it, and it burns; put more wood on it, it burns more; put more wood on it, burns more; desire after desire, one day you will be consumed. That shall be end of you, without ever knowing where you are going. In the end, the subtle body will take the soul with the strength of the neutral mind’s development to go to the infinity of God. You need three things at that time: you need the soul, which is always there; you need the subtle mind, which is always there; and the subtle body. Nothing goes with you if your subtle body does not. And how and where will you go? With the strength of the neutral mind you go into the unbiased God’s land, to ever shining, ever living, all potent, omnipresent, God—that one God. It is not your God of Los Angeles and New York; not the God of Rome or Greece; not the God of Sikhs, Hindus, Moslem, Jews and Christians; not the God of the Buddhist; not the God of the Yogis, Swamis and the Nadas or Siddhas; It is that God which has form and no form, which has light and no light, which exists but doesn’t exist, which is now and never—that God. Where there is no polarity, no sides, no divisions, no section, no plus, no minus, zero, shuniya—that God. Can you be that neutral? Can you think in neutral, can you act in neutral, can you rationalize in neutral, can you philosophize in neutral? For example, mother is stuck on the child, ‘It’s my child.’ My child, and she takes care of it, she works, she loves, she hugs, does the whole thing. The child looks back and smiles and in this way the mother teaches dependency to the child. She takes away sovereignty, takes away intuition and makes that child a cripple, absolutely lethargic, dependent idiot. And yet she calls it love. Well every side has the other side. “Oh, she is beautiful, she is wonderful, I love her. God it’s a beautiful life, wonderful sex, everything is fine.” When he is adult, he cannot get up the next morning on his own feet, his legs shake. “Oh, I can’t live without her, I can’t do without her,




it’s impossible, everything is there with her.” Look at how blind. We get stuck and jammed so badly, even ordinary machines can’t break that way. We have no flexibility of mind at all. We can’t switch. Because we can’t meditate and we can’t clean the garbage. We don’t clean the mirror so that we can see, through the gem quality of it, that light of that infinity in experience. That is how you get it together, with your mental strength. Then life becomes blissful, then poverty and richness, then beauty and ugliness, then nothing and everything, means nothing to you. Mitthee kanchan ek samaan. The Gold and the earth are the same. Then the thief and the saint look alike to you. Then beautiful and ugly both look unique to you. That’s the mind and quality of mind we are talking about. Are you ready tonight to go deep into that mind? MEDITATION: BUTTERFLY KRIYA [See end of transcript for complete write-up.]

Sit on your heels. Sorry if it is a little tough night. If you can’t conveniently sit on your heels and you don’t have that privilege, it’s all right, try to do your best. Fold your hands like this and keep it open. That is how it will look. Right, understand? Good. Butterfly. Move the hands open and closed like a butterfly. It will create the sound, Har, Har, if you really do it right. That’s where the sound Har came from—Har, Har. It will create this if you accurately take pavan, the air, between the palms as they meet—it will create the sound Har. It’s a natural thing. Close your eyes, look at the tip of your nose, and create the sound and create it in harmony. Mentally the sound is Har, physically the sound is Har, concentrate. Some of you doing it wrong, let me check you. Open up, stop. See this hand is open this way and this is closed right. You follow? And what we do is this. We don’t open like this. This remains one side, you know, two sides of the triangle. One side and two sides of the triangle are equal, then the triangles are equal. That’s geometry, did you study it? No. (Students laugh.) Very good. Open only one side, the pinky side.


I will give you a rhythm, so that you can do it right. [The beat is played by Yogi Bhajan.] Now stop it. Open up your eyes, behave normally. How do you feel? This is not something super spiritual, it’s just a purely physical exercise. You might have done it wrong but if you do this, open this way and meet this way and this way, not this way, just this way, one side close, one side open, one side close, one side open. Move it this way, it will create the sound Har. And in that sound you keep on correlating and correlating and correlating and mentally coordinating the sound with it. Synchronize mind, attention, action and perception. You will reach an experience where you will see all that garbage start floating through the subconscious. Once you can develop that release, then you have something to clean. If subconscious only releases to you through dreams and through nightmares and through the daydream and the imagination and the speculation and through the projection, you don’t have a chance in your life to be you. Who are you saying you belong to? You belong to nobody. You belong to your daydreams; you belong to your night dreams; you belong to your fears; you belong to your thoughts, emotions, and feelings. You have never belonged to you because you is above all. You is not a criteria which is negotiable. You is Dharma. You is the God. You is the truth. Everything that is, is in you. But there is something above this: ultimate experience, ultimate reality, ultimate truth, ultimate light. You can see it, that light, you can see through the gaze of your mind and you can see your soul. That is how you get it together, through your mental strength. That is how you find God, through your mental strength. That is how you find experience, through your mental strength. Is that understandable? You have any questions? We did it for eleven minutes. Did you feel any rhythm between your physical and your mental activity? Can you do it for sixty two minutes at home? Yes or no? Students: Yes, sir. Yogi Bhajan: Don’t do it for me. It’s not my prerogative. I have done it all my life. I realized, when I was very young, that if I do not know me, why am I cheating people, why am I lying to people, what am I saying to people? I don’t know


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me and me is talking? Which one is talking, me or I? When I is talking, me is not talking. I talk, me doesn’t. I don’t know me. You are not confused by what I am saying? You make love with ‘I.’ You talk through ‘I,’ you have expectations through ‘I,’ you have everything through your imagination of ‘I.’ You have absolutely not opened the Third “Eye” and you have no ‘Me.’

is realized, ‘Thou’ sits in it. And that’s the state of ecstasy called turiya stage. May the longtime sun shine upon you All love surround you And the pure light within you Guide your way on.

Palach palach sagalee mu-ee jhootai dhandhai mo-ho

Yogi Bhajan: Now guide your way on to one thing, we

-Guru Arjan, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, page 133

Everybody dies suffering in false entanglements with worldly things. False love—it is just ‘palach palach,’ it is in-between itself. There is no realism, there is no reality, nobody knows anybody. You think you know anybody? Yes, you know the ‘I’ of everybody, but you don’t know the ‘Me’ of anybody because ‘I’ doesn’t know its own ‘Me’. Then you are saying “me”: why is this man divorcing “me?” Why is this man in love with “me?” Why is this man negative to “me?” Why is this man positive to “me?” What else can they do? That’s all they know. Rock has to strike against a rock and it creates a spark. Sometimes it burns the whole jungle, doesn’t matter. It’s a continuous process from century to century. Ay man mayri-aa, too sadaa raho har naalay Har naal raho too man mayray, dookh sabh visaarnaa Angeekaar oho karay tayraa, kaaraj sabh savaarnaa Sabhanaa galaa samarath su-aamee, so ki-o manaho visaaray Kahai Naanak man mayray, sadaa raho har naalay

have reached the state of life and we want to clean it out. Guide your . . . Students: Guide your way on. Yogi Bhajan: You know why we fold our hands? [prayer pose] To neutralize our magnetic field. We greet each other on neutral grounds. When we do this, this is no man’s land; when this is it [left hand up at the navel; right hand open and up beside face] it is the blessing, when this is it [left hand on the heart; right hand open and up beside the face], it is grace. Sometime I will teach you those languages. When we do this, when we shake hands, it is a welcome, it is an exchange of energy. My right and your right meet. These human body languages are just to accommodate each other, one psyche into another psyche, one psyche out of another psyche; but there is a mind, too. We’ll continue, thank you very much, God bless you, Sat Nam.

- Guru Amar Das, Anand Sahib

Oh, my mind, remain with the God always. If you remain with God, then all the pain and the disease and everything will be gone. That one who moves your limbs and gives you the strength to live by, that’s the one who will adjust your affairs. Oh my mind, why do you lose the one God, who is capable and competent of all what all that is. Sayeth Nanak, oh my mind, remain with God all the time. That’s what Nanak is. Not the Nanak we represent. Nanak saw within his inner eye, the Third Eye, the ‘Me.’ And from ‘Me,’ it is very easy to see ‘We.’ And the moment ‘We’ 82



a

KUNDALINI YOGA MEDITATION BUTTERFLY KRIYA Yogi Bhajan • September 12, 1989

POSTURE:

Sit on your heels.

MUDRA:

Bring the heels of your hands together in front of the throat— making a V with your hands. The four fingers are together and the thumbs are touching and stretched back toward the body.

EYES:

Closed eyes at the tip of the nose.

MOVEMENT:

From this V, begin rhythmically clapping the hands. The movement is like a hinge or a butterfly. Keep the thumbs together and the heels of the hands together as you open and close the hand. Not too fast, but steady. TIME:

11 to 62 minutes.

It will create the sound, Har, Har, if you really do it right. That’s where the sound Har came. Har, Har —if you accurately take pavan, the air, it will create the sound, Har. It’s a natural thing. Mentally the sound is Har, physically the sound is Har, concentrate. COMMENTS:



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Chapter SIX Study Questions & Projects

1. Yogi Bhajan describes mental strength as the ability to switch gears smoothly and appropriately between the negative, positive and neutral minds. It is also the ability to notice when you're not doing this. Many of us as individuals and as teachers demonstrate our mental strength in normal activities and in our roles as a teacher. But when conflicts arise, especially around issues that seem to be valued by society, our friends or things we are emotionally invested in, our mental strength seems to disappear. In the United States, the slang for this is a “hot button” or a trigger. It is a very useful exercise to recognize your hot buttons, learn them from others and test your own mental strength in the face of them. Take a few minutes to survey your own behaviors. Identify three of your hot buttons. How can you practice exerting your mental strength so that you have it when you need it— when those feelings or situations are present? What role might others play in helping you develop that strength? 2. When our teacher says the positive mind is not meant to touch the subconscious, does he mean no positive thoughts come from the subconscious or does he mean that in the face of a negative thought the positive mind is not to reinforce it by a search of the subconscious? Exercise: With your partner or your study group develop a sketch of the stages of emotions that we go through in the meditation process. He tells us several times in this course that meditation is not being blissful, or dwelling in a positive thought or feeling. When you meditate deeply and you encounter your subconscious, it's always a bit of a struggle. In fact, in another course he identified twenty-one stages of meditation and explains the experiences a person goes through—the emotions and changes of each stage. How many stages can you identify? Three? Five? Twelve? Why do we not talk extensively about the stages in our normal classes? As a teacher you need to be aware of all the stages and how to guide someone through them.

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Exercise: From your meditation experience on the nine aspects and your study of our primary text for this course, The Mind, what is your most dominant aspect? What is your weakest aspect? Which projections help balance both of these? How do your dominant and weakest aspects affect your projection as a teacher? Share your observation with others in your group. 3. Understanding and cultivating the neutral mind is paramount for a yogi. Without a strong neutral mind it is impossible to live in the consciousness of non-duality. What is the difference between the neutral mind and a detached mind? Can you be neutral and still be fully engaged? Can you be fully engaged with something and not have neutral mind? If the neutral mind is so central to the yogic consciousness, why bother to develop the negative mind? 4. To a yogi, the brain is a small part of the mind. To engage the mind’s full potential, we need the capacity of the neutral mind in the state of shuniya. The brain and the mind develop in concert with each other as we grow up. Part of our difficulty is that we are not trained to use the neutral mind when we're young. Our brain and our neural patterns naturally grow in response to what we sense as our challenge or our stimulation. What kind of parenting styles and environmental situations open or close us to our full potential and attuning with our neutral mind?




Journaling: A Journey

The Purpose of Journaling Yogi Bhajan often asked his students to write on a given topic, to analyze themselves in a self-reflective manner or to journal experiences past or present. Journaling is one process that let's each of us deepen our learning so that we can apply it to our life and gain mastery and wisdom. This is different than simply doing a diary or a descriptive summary of events or personal feelings. These can be done without self-reflection, without a shift in perspective, and without assessing how you could apply the techniques and skills to actual situations. The process we're asking you to engage in is a learning journal. In this process, you will reflect on your experience with the techniques and perspectives developed in the Transformation training. These are the kinds of questions to ask yourself and write about: What have I learned? How can I apply this to each area of my life? How does it enhance my ability to teach and serve? Using these techniques, what would I do differently in situations where in the past, I had not applied the awareness engendered by the course? How does my experience and learning affect others?

The Goals of Journaling 4Discover the meaning of your experiences in and out of the class as they relate to the course focus. 4Connect

class experience to real life encounters and your ability to apply your skills with confidence.

4Increase

your capacity to step back from the flow of thoughts and feelings to establish a perspective on yourself through consciousness.

4Strengthen

the habit to process your life with intuitive insight and critical assessment.

4Recognize

your blocks and your potential.

4Instill

the values of a Teacher in yourself as you encounter each area of your life.

4Care

for and cultivate your Self.

4Make

connections between your perceptions, skills and concepts within each of the five modules in the Transformation training and certification. 4Take

ownership of your growth and establish the perspective that each of these courses is about your personal, interpersonal and transpersonal awakening, not just techniques or ideas.



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How to Journal There are many ways to journal. The approach we use here is to record observations about yourself, the world, your experiences and your practice—reflect on that from multiple perspectives. Use the insights for yourself and share with others in your study group or with a mentor. You can choose to use the basics: paper and a writing instrument. Or use a computer. Or you can even find on-line (free or paid) journals. Pick what is comfortable for you to use or what is recommended in your particular training. Other suggestions include: Date each entry; Customize each day by adding a quotation by Yogi Bhajan on the topic of your course; Use quotes from various sources to broaden the scope of your reflections. You will be expected to spend at least 3 hours doing this once your journal is set up. In reality, many students find this so useful that they spend 30 to 120 hours on average, over several months. Journaling is for you, during and after the classroom training. The classroom puts all the ingredients together and turns up the heat, but it is applying the techniques and processing your awareness and feelings that does the baking. It takes some time, patience, consistency and discipline. Do at least 40 days. We recommend 120 days in order to watch the unfolding of your efforts and make the skills you acquire conscious and seamlessly sewn into your life. Many people keep a journal from one course to the next as they progress through all the Transformation modules to be aware of and reflect on all the changes they go through in this process of becoming a Teacher. The format of the journal is a bit unusual. For each day you write in five ways: First, take a few deep breaths. Become still. Open yourself to everything you felt, observed, imagined and did this day. Become open without censorship or editing. Begin to write. You may flow in your writing. You may jump from experience to idea to feeling—as you wish. It is your unique expression. Write about things, internal and external, that relate to the module content. For example, for Conscious Communication, you might note how you spoke with friends, enemies and colleagues; how a critical news event involved good or poor communication; what insight you received from reading a familiar scripture or inspirational source; or how you became

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unconscious in an interaction and how you would do it differently in the future, applying the principles of conscious communication. You may write as long as you like. Second, look over what you just wrote. Now, from the perspective of the negative mind, write about the same things. The negative mind filters experiences to protect you, to recognize what is wrong and alert you to error. Third, immediately write about the same experiences from the perspective of the positive mind. The positive mind filters experiences to find opportunity, things you want, ways to expand or move forward, and skills, feelings or actions you want to use or improve. Fourth, get into your neutral mind. Now, look at both of these perspectives—the negative and positive minds. The neutral mind assesses everything from the perspective of your consciousness, identity, intuition and the short- and longterm consequences. Write quickly about what you note from this perspective. Insights, implications, values demonstrated, integrity in your actions, and recognition of positive and negative effects. Fifth, go beyond thought for a moment. Enter into the state of zero (shuniya) and from You within you, write a comment. It is a comment between you and yourself. Simple, direct and real. It need not be profound or clever, just real within you. It is often short. Once you try this process a few times it begins to be easy and flows as you turn the facets of each part of your mind and consciousness to reflect on what you have observed, experienced and done. Many students find it useful to add a color code—a border to each perspective: Red for the negative mind; green for the positive; blue for the neutral; white for the shuniya state; and an earthy grey, tan or yellow for the initial first person writing. How you write—in blocks, single flows, poetry, conversations between parts of yourself—is up to you. Each of us has a style that flows best and expresses ourself. Some people are unfamiliar with writing or are shy or unsure. Go beyond your doubts or insecurities—your blocks. Journaling is a simple practice to express yourself and observe




you and your life. If you do not know how to start, just start writing without precondition. Or pick one event, idea or feeling to start. Some people prefer a structure and systematically ask themselves a number of questions each day as they scan through their experience. Experiment until you learn what works best for you. If you need inspiration or help, check with your teacher, study partners or mentor. Remember: However you structure your approach to journaling, do it with curiosity, joy, alertness and openness. One way to assess how well you are matching the objectives of the “learning journal” is to check if you have, in your own way, covered these five questions: 1. What happened? You wrote descriptions of events, feelings, new ideas, issues or situations that apply to the module. 2. What are your reactions and behaviors around the event, issue, situation or experience? Examined in terms of negative and positive minds, relate what you observed about your own attitudes, feelings and previous knowledge, history or skills. 3. What is the value of the event, situation, experience or practice to you as a person, teacher and student? 4. What is a new understanding of the event, issue, situation or reaction based on all the above? What have you learned about awareness and the area of yoga you are studying?

How to Use the Journal Doing this journal is a “realtime” process. You are affected by it as you do it. It is also a reflective process that invites occasional review. Look back over your insights and gauge how well you have progressed in noticing areas you need to improve, skills you have mastered, and capacities and ideas you have taken into your teaching and daily life. Your journal can also be used for sharing. Sharing can be as simple as extracting insights, events or issues from your notes and engaging a co-student in dialogue so both of you gain from the experience. If you have a study group you can take time periodically—every 1-4 weeks—to talk about what you observed, the level of change you have been able to internalize and crystallize in your actions and perceptions, and how to solve problems that arose. You could also decide as a group to engage in a meditation process together to support the development of your core capacities. You can also use your journal as a tool for processing with your mentor. If you are in a course that takes place over several weeks or sessions, the journal can be invaluable in generating questions for class discussion. It also helps you formulate how you would teach the topics to students in your personal interactions as well as in classes. We hope this journey—through journaling—will enrich your experience in this module or the Transformation course as a whole and that you will be able to turn again and again to your reflections in these pages to inform not only your teaching but your life.

5. How will you approach the same or similar event, situation, or issue in the future? Indicate what new effort, approach or clarity you will apply and what the result would be.

© 2006 Kundalini Research Institute KRI INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING LEVEL 2 • MIND & MEDITATION STUDY GUIDE

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Mind and Meditation Manual and Study Guide

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