Give, Serve and Be Grateful

Excerpted from Chapter 9 of Success

In the teachings shared by Yogi Bhajan, a human has ten bodies.

• First is the Soul.
• Second is the Negative Mind.
• Third is the Positive Mind.
• Fourth is the Neutral Mind.
• Fifth is the Physical Body.
• Sixth is the Arcline—the power of prayer.
• Seventh is the Aura.
• Eighth is the Pranic Body—the body relating to breath.
• Ninth is the Subtle Body.
• Tenth is the Radiant Body.
• When all of these bodies work together consciously, it creates the Eleventh Body—the Perfected Body.

You will never find a community leader who doesn’t know how to give. Seva (Selfless service). Giving is the only way. Don’t only give to those who ask. Give to those who don’t ask. Keep on giving. Become a giver. Your faculty and God’s faculty will become the same. That’s absolute divinity.

Daydaa day laiday thak paahi.
(You, Great Giver, keep giving to us and we grow tired of just taking.)
Guru Nanak, Japji Sahib – Pauree 3.

You should be so conscious and so giving that people get tired of your hospitality.

Some people have never had the chance to sit together with another person and eat. How often, out of joy, have you forced another people to break bread with you? How many times was somebody eating and you had the guts to sit with that person and start eating from the same plate?

God and divinity and nonsense and all the yak-yak claims and yoga and standing on your head and everything. What is it? What have you learned? How many people have you hugged? How many children have you played with? You are looking for romance and you don’t have any romance with nature, the prakriti? What are you up to? In this life, there are challenges. These challenges challenge how much sweetness is in you and how much sweetness you want to share.

There is one God, one God – that idiot God who still takes care of you in spite of the fact you don’t deserve it. That one God. How many times have you become one with each other in the name of God? How much nearness have you created? How relaxed are you when somebody makes a mistake? Where is your kindness and compassion?

There is a university called the universe. There is a great teacher in this university called nature. There is a great subject called the faculty of life. We want to give our children that freedom so it can become their choice.

You have to walk on your own two legs. That’s the challenge of life. Today or tomorrow or the day after or twenty years from now, you have to walk. You have to face this world.

When I was in Alaska, I went to the house of a student. They lived in a home by the creek and I said to his wife, “Do you know what is happening on the planet?”

She said, “It is revolving.”

That was the answer. She said, “It is revolving. It creates a day and night for me. How can I forget that Yogiji?”

I said, “You are the best in the world.”

It’s very funny how people understand life—climatically, critically and complainingly. But there is one class of people who are complimenting. They have no attachment. They compliment their Creator. They are grateful.

Creative supplement is required for life to grow in peace and tranquility. And a consistent sense of radiance of the Tenth Body is required to protect us. The Subtle Body must give us our intuitive self so that we can understand what is coming to us.

Every day we should socialize and be kind to each other to grow our ultimate aura. If somebody has fallen, we should raise that person up. If somebody is going down, we should lift him. If somebody is hungry, we should feed him. If somebody is unhappy we should dance with him. There are things to do and those things are part of us.

Somebody once asked me, “Is it really important to go to your class? Is it a must?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, I have beautiful students, don’t worry. Simply, you are reminded every time you see them that you are gracious and not guilty. It’s worth your few bucks.”

“Why?”

I said, “Why do you get a massage?”

“I relax.”

“Well, go to my class and you will relax. Because you will be told that the subconscious tension you create, the subconscious fear you create, the subconscious being you create is unwanted. It is not required.”

“That’s one way to be happy. To serve people who share divinity, who allow us to accumulate our integrity, who give us a moment of grace. This life is a real thing.

Life is like a beautiful, beautiful, marvelous horse but you are crippled riding it. You have unnecessary problems, unnecessary attachments, unnecessary things and then you believe that God does everything. If God does everything, what are you bothered about? Because you cannot believe it, you cannot trust it. He gives you the breath of life and you create a commentary with it.

Have you seen football, baseball, whatever they play? There is a box up there. Some people sit there, and they comment on the players, right? They don’t play. They are not in the field. They are sitting on the top of the universe, “Oh, he did this, he did that.” That’s what you do.

You do not guide your ego to the strength of straightforwardness. You just comment on everything and create a drama.

And what do we do at home when we are listening to the television? “Oohhhh… he hit so good. Come on boy. Run after it.” Have you seen people watching a game at home? Thank God they don’t break the TV screens. They are into it like they are the ones who are playing. When the game is over, they are still in their living home. They didn’t go anywhere.

One person was watching a game. When the game stopped, he ran to bathroom.

I said, “Why didn’t you get up sooner?”

He said, “It was during the game.”

He wanted to go urinate for that whole time, and he stopped it. That is how much you can get involved in maya. You know it is not real, but you feel it is real. Why not feel the real as real?

One man was sitting once. He had an earthen pot with a plant in it. His wife said, “Come inside.”

He said, “Just wait. I am coming.”

After one hour she came out and said, “What’s going on? You are looking at this plant and this vase. What is in it?”

“Don’t disturb me. I am coming.”

After an hour she brought a big stick and she said, “Are you coming in or I am going to break this plant and break this vase and everything.”

“Why?”

“You have been staring at it for two hours. What are you looking at?”

“Come sit with me.”

She sat down. He said, “See that branch? That little branch—that little one.”

“Yes, I see that branch. What is it?’

“There is a little leaf coming out of it. Just watch, watch, watch.”

“Where?”

“Just watch, don’t yell. The leaf will be hurt. Just watch. The branch is sprouting with a

little leaf.”

“Well, they all do it. Just come in.”

He said, “No I am watching. You watch with me.”

But there was no oneness. There was no sophistication. There was no togetherness. There was no reality. For him it was the greatest dawn of the universe to see a little leaf coming out of the little bud on the branch. For his wife it was impossible because dinner was getting cold, the sun was setting and he was wasting his time. That’s where we conflict.

Our reach to the nature, the prakriti, is different.

What we get out of our holiness is intuition. We can see in time what shall be. The sequence has started, and we can see what the consequences shall be. But when we are not with the flow, we do not know.

That’s why, sometimes, I sit like this and we repeat a few words. Then we meditate for a few minutes. Because when we sit collectively, and meditate collectively, the total sum of that experience purifies our being.

Do you remember a day when you wanted to come to class and you couldn’t? It happens. It happens many times. It happens when you wanted to get up in the morning and be with your God and Lord, but you couldn’t. It happens when you wanted to love somebody and serve somebody. You really wanted to do it, but you couldn’t.

We want to get rid of this “couldn’t.” We want to make our will so clean, so clear, so positive, that the “couldn’t” doesn’t touch our shores. We have a very strong disease. It’s called “couldn’t.” And ultimately this couldn’t is like a cancer. It eats our pratigya—our determination, our essence—because we “couldn’t.”

All our problems on this planet come from this “couldn’t.” This “couldn’t” makes us slip from our dharma, from our duty.

Just imagine Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth master. He had to decorate his younger son, himself, and send him to war.  He could do it and he did it. Because he had a mastery over “couldn’t.”

The Sikhs were there. They said, “Lord, you are not supposed to send your son until we are finished.”

He said, “No, let him go and face the war.”

For the sake of the glory of the dharma, Guru Gobind Singh decorated his own sons to go into war where one hundred twenty-five thousand people per one Sikh solider were fighting.

Reality has reverence and there is nothing else. Because this life—this one life—is given to us for completion.

When I came to United States and I started teaching Kundalini Yoga, I knew at least that it is a science that gives a person excellence. It will create excellent characters. It will take away the “couldn’t.” It will give us a pathway of essential sacrifice—which will give us maximum happiness.

We cannot sacrifice our ego. We cannot sacrifice our attachment. We cannot sacrifice our anger. We cannot sacrifice our lust. We cannot sacrifice our greed. Then, what can we sacrifice? These are the faculties that force our “couldn’t” on us.

We make every effort to survive. But we need to survive with the ultimate reality, with applied consciousness, and with absolute reality of grace. We can’t compromise. Some people can do it. Some can’t. There’s nothing personal in it. You can live like a frog in the well or you can live in the ocean. It’s up to you. Things will not change if you don’t change them.

And what will change things in you is that You—the divine You—which is in you. It is the divinity in you that will allow you to sacrifice. It is the reality in you that will bring you realization.

Don’t take it personally. It is not personal. It’s a general rule of prakriti. It is the law of law of the lord. Purkha and prakriti. It shall never change. You have to change with it.

Baba Deep Singh was seventy-two years old. He had two hundred and fifty people. They were ten miles away from Amritsar. He drew the line and said, “Those who have the willingness to go, come along with me now. Those who have the determination to go, cross this line.”

Fortunately, everybody crossed. With two hundred and fifty people he attacked a hundred thousand men—fully trained—to liberate the Golden Temple.

When he got beheaded in an attack along with the commander of the enemy forces, somebody reminded him, “You took a vow that you won’t die until your head bows at the temple.” This event is recorded by enemy sources. It is not a made-up story.

Baba Deep Singh said, “Pick up my head and put it in my left hand.”

The soldier obeyed. Baba Deep Singh stood up, with his head in his left hand, and started fighting again. The enemy forces ran—they had never seen such a phenomena.

These are human powers. They met the challenge of prakriti and defied it for their purpose. That’s called commitment. That gives you character. That gives you dignity, divinity, grace, the power to sacrifice and then happiness. Because the only thing that dies is the physical body. But there are nine other bodies. The total account is ten bodies. That’s the reality. You have to learn to love all the ten bodies, not only your physical body. Even if you don’t destroy the physical body, it is going to destroy itself. That’s the law of prakriti.

Jo upji-o so binas hai paro aaj kai kaal.

Whatever has been created shall be destroyed; everyone shall perish, today or tomorrow.

— Guru Teg Bahadur, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, page 1429, line 4

One who is born has to die. But the other bodies can help you be young, fresh and beautiful. This body is given to serve and to recognize that there are nine other bodies with it. That is called the path of dharma. And it is up to you to follow it or deny it.

Life is to be lived. Life is a given gift. Atma, the soul, takes the body. The distance of life is covered by destiny and challenged by fate. That’s how it goes. There are no two ways about it.

There are some people who live life by making their security just the earth—the here and now. They box themselves in. They feel insecure. They feel irrelevant to the environments if they are not secure. And their security is very important to them. So they box themselves in and it’s kind of a prison.

Whereas atma, the pranic shakti, is also a prisoner of the ribcage. It breathes in and out. It can go in and out. But when a person with his ego boxes himself in because of his insecurity, then there’s no place to go in and out. Then a person goes deeper and deeper, layer by layer, and enslave’s one’s atma—one’s self. Then that person does not have any sensitivity to feel others. All they want to know is whether or not their security is secure.

Now, there are other people who live a life of mission. They live a life to love everybody. They are smiling. They are beautiful. They support everybody.

Excerpted from Success and the Spirit: An Aquarian Path to Abundance. Page 75-76

Copyright The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan