Excerpt from a Gurdwara lecture on September 17, 1976 by Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan
So question came, we started investigating, is Guru Granth a book? Is it a holy book? Or is it a living Guru? That is the experiment, which I wanted actually to share with you. I don’t worry what you want to do, because if you do something good, you will be good, if you do something not good, you will be bad anyway. There is no place for a fake in the world. This Maya, this hallucination ‘I am great,’ makes you low because when a Sikh says he is great, then Guru is small. When a Sikh says he is small, the Guru is great. It is a constant established vibration. Difference between a Sikh and an ordinary person is only this. Sikh praises the Guru and an ordinary person praises himself.
“Aaoji Meri Khotri Dekho.”
Look at my place, look at my machinery, look at my business, look at my political achievement, look at my wife, look at my daughter-in-law, look at this, this, but a Sikh he says come on look the room of the Guru, come and see how we do the Kirtan, come and see how Lord has blessed us, come and see how Guru has guided us. So there are two different calibers, different vibrations, different generations. So we wanted to find what happened. So we found from the history of the pages that Shabad was the first Guru. Then came Nanak, Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das, but there was a one page of Sikh history, which was totally ignored. That was Guru Gobind Rai became Guru Gobind Singh, this is ignored by the Sikhs and normally, intentionally or due to ignorance it is a very battling situation. Guru Gobind Rai was a perfect installed Sat Guru. There was no doubt about it.
Guru Gobind Rai after creating the Khalsa begged of the Khalsa to be baptized to be a Khalsa and Khalsa baptized Gobind Rai the Guru to Gobind Singh and then the entire congregation of the Khalsa installed him to be a Guru. It has never happened in the history of the spiritual world. This is one of the most powerful thing in the history of any religion that a giver of the religion begs the religion in experience, so what happened is the man lives here on this Earth in experience of Godhood, that is why Sikh bows to Siri Guru Granth. There are five words, Gur, you always say use this Gur, Gur means formula, remember that. Don’t get with this, messed up with this Urdu people Gu-Roo and all that jazz. That’s wrong. Let us talk in the Gurmukhi, the language given to us by Angad, the Guru. Don’t mix up the values. We have been influenced by the Brahmanism and by other sects so heavily, that we have lost our basic fundamental values.
The word is Gur, Gur means formula. Guru means one who uses the formula and one who knows the formula. The applicator of the formula is word Guru.Then Sat Guru is who knows the essence the truth of the application of the formula and then comes the stage of Siri Guru. Siri Guru Granth. You do not call a Guru Granth. It is, it is named, entitled, enshrined as Siri Guru Granth. That means universal application of the formula and then comes a simple, Siri Guru and Wahe Guru. Wahe Guru is the ecstasy of the Lord’s experience. That is your mantra. So feeling that we worship and bow to Siri Guru Granth, do we bow to a book or do we bow to a living Guru? Now that is a scientific fact to recognize, Siri Guru Granth is nothing but in sutras. It is vibrations.There are eighty-four meridian points on the upper palate of every human being. The ling is the tongue, and when you read the Siri Guru Granth the tongue rotates on those meridian points making the thalamus to secrete, giving an ecstasy of consciousness to the man who reads it. What a human cannot do and what a human can take years to do, a vibration intact and applied in Siri Guru Granth can change the entire Kosha, entire self of any individual and this was what people never understood so far. This was… that’s why you seek Gurus. It is a human fakeness, that if there is somebody spiritual they bow to him, they touch the feet, they say, ‘oh bless me.’Bless you for what? For a more dust? So that you can put little few pounds in your mouth more? Sikh religion is not a religion of this place, it is here and hereafter. And that is what the Siri Guru Granth can give a person. That is equilibrium of mind and it is the highest union.”
Now let us read the first few sutras that is Mool Mantra.
Now I am not going to teach you, I am going to recite it and you can pick up the recitation and perhaps you can recite exactly like that, if you cannot you can live with your recitation the way you have been taught. But question is having a wrong cut on the key, can you open the lock? That’s the fundamental question, it’s a scientific question, today is the world they don’t consider what are you and who you are. They ask explanation. They want to know why we bow to the Siri Guru Granth? Why, what is it? What is wrong with the Bible? What is wrong with the Koran? What is wrong with other holy religions? Why we have to tie seven yards of the Yarmulka on our head and keep our hair? These are the fundamental questions. People ask and a American is nothing but a mister question. He doesn’t move until he is satisfied. So scientifically we have to answer facts to prove and I’ll not go much further but I’ll go just right into a simple thing ‘Life.’ Ek Ong Kar, can you recite it please?
Sangat: Ek Ong Kar.
YB: Now everybody is chanting just like somebody is doing a hard labor. No, no, you do it for yourself, be selfish for today. Gurdwara is a place where we come to seek the Guru, and don’t recite this mantra as illiterates. You are human beings and without this knowledge you can be here any great, thereafter there is no place for you. This is your Mool Mantra; this will establish your root in those heavens from where you come and where you go. You are not a… you are here sixty-five years average. So the Earth is a very temporary phase. So you must have to announce, you must learn to pronounce with the Pranic energy, the energy of the life, the correct mantra. Ek, Ek, word is very clear.
That is why Guru Nanak made you to chant Ong in the most correct manner Put Ek before. Ek-Ong and this word is Ong, it is not Om. You go on saying whole life Om, Om, Om, you do not do a thing. If I would not have come to Japan, I would have said Japan, Japan, sitting in America; I would have never been in Japan. Word is Ong and it’s the correct way to chant it. Word Ong is not chanted by mouth. Just understand the original Om first, then you will understand the total difference why Guru Nanak put Ek before it.
(Yogiji chants Aummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…)
It’s the sound of the conch. They will explain to you that it’s the sound of the highest conch. It has to come through the Trikuti but the science of it they don’t know. Guru Nanak because taught us the religion of the householder so he corrected this whole thing by adding word Ek, Ek Ong Kar, can you recite this way? Ek Ong Kar! Come on.
Sangat: Ek Ong Kar.
YB: It’s a one Shabad, it’s a one word. It has three phases Ek-Ong-Kar. That Shabad Om, which is meant to stimulate the thalamus the lower part of the brain, the Kamal, Kamal Bagassey that…
Side B
Come in the heavens I’ll give you beautiful young girls, if I have to get to heavens to get you beautiful girls, what is wrong here? Why can’t you get it here? There is no promise in Sikh religion, you must bear this. All it says, Guru says I’ll stand by you, God will stand by you! Why? Because you do practice right. Sikh is a practitioner of the righteousness. You must understand the difference between this religion, this path of life, Marag they call it Panth, is different than anything else. The Mool Mantra, which is the root mantra is the most beautiful scientific thing ever given to any religion. Ek Ong Kar, say it.
Sangat: Ek Ong Kar.
YB: Sat, now this tongue goes in the upper palate on the thirty-fourth meridian point when you chant Sat. Sat Nam.
Sangat: Sat Nam.
YB: Karta Purkh.
Sangat: Karta Purkh.
YB: Nirbhao.
Sangat: Nirbhao.
YB: If you read the Arya Samajist literature of Swamiji, he says Guru Nanak was illiterate because he didn’t say Nirbhay! Now Guru Nanak was scientist he couldn’t say Nirbhay. He wanted a man of a caliber when say Nirbhao, two meridians should touch the thalamus secretion to the point that man becomes fearless and that is the eleventh meridian point. Nirbhao.
Sangat: Nirbhao.
YB: Nirvair.
Sangat: Nirvair.
YB: Now there is a little problem in this, it is Nir-Vair… it is not Nir-Veir. It is Nir-Vair. Your mouth opens and the nervous system controls you. So you have to correctly say that. Nir-vair.
Sangat: Nirvair.
YB: Akal Moorat
Sangat: Akal Moorat.
YB: Ajoo… now this is another situation, which we always do it. Ajooni.
Sangat: Ajooni.
YB: Saibhung.
Sangat: Saibhung.
YB: Here in the Mool Mantra, these are two vibrations. Have to be said together but separately and this needs the highest concentration because Mool Mantra is coming to the end of its first phase. That is why this is the test. Ajooni.
Sangat: Ajooni.
YB: Saibhung.
Sangat: Saibhung.
YB: Gurprasad.
Sangat: Gurprasad.
YB: Jap.
Sangat: Jap.
YB: Aad Sach.
Sangat: Aad Sach.
YB: Jugaad Sach.
Sangat: Jugaad Sach.
YB: Hai Bhee Sach.
Sangat: Hai Bhee Sach.
YB: Nanak Hosee Bhee Sach.
Sangat: Nanak Hosee Bhee Sach.
YB: Now this is our Mool Mantra in which Guru Nanak explains the facets of God and then gives an order. In the entire Siri Guru Granth there is a one Hukam, there is one Hukam only Jap, what? Guru hei na, it is Guru, Guru must give Hukam and then must give the mantra. Jap what?
“Aad Sach Jugaad Sach Hai Bhee Sach Nanak Hosee Bhee Sach.”
And this is exactly Kundalini mantra twenty-six thousand years ago it is written right in the same vibration only the language is changed. So we have not been cheated and we have not been taken out of the situation, we have been exonerated and exalted and established in the realm of God consciousness by the House of Guru Nanak, so if you want to follow the House of Guru Nanak, follow it correctly, live it correctly, otherwise you are not very much needed there.
Don’t live as a fake Sikh. You maybe hurt at that point but I tell you it is a great tragedy to be a fake Sikh, because counterfeit do not make much of the ground. And Sikh has a living life; Sikh does not worship a personality. Each Sikh is a brother, it was a brotherhood, it was a being and look at the situation, Khalsa word,
“Khalsa Mero Roop Hei Khaas, Khalse Mein Hu Karu Nivaas.”
In the Khalsa there is no woman, there is no man. Khalsa applies to woman equally as it applies to man. This I learnt by the Americans. When American women wanted to have Amrit and she asked the question why she can’t tie a turban? Why she cannot have Dastaar when everything is… what God has not given to her not given to her, but what has given why not it be equal? And everybody looked around at that time they said, “Yes, it is true.” He said, “Khalsa has no gender.”
Khalsa woman and Khalsa man doesn’t make any difference, Khalsa is a Khalsa. So Guru Gobind Singh the knower of the fact gave us the path of the Khalsa. Sikh was supposed to seek; now today it’s a tragedy to review the Sikh religion. There are more Pathats than in the western world and I when I call a Pathat, I don’t differentiate between a man with a beard and a turban and even having five Kakars and pretend to look like a Khalsa but not lived like anything. I don’t care how much you decorate a sheep, but sheep is a sheep and I am not going to with my two eyes is going to call it a lion. And this is what today is the tragedy and this is the challenge of the time. To live in the concept of the Khalsa is to live pure. Khalsa means pure. The pure ones shall rule, pure ones will prevail, there will be ‘Chianvey Karod Khalsa,’ Guru Gobind Singh never said there will be ‘Chianvey Karod Sikhs.’ You please bear with me.
Our history has been well prophesized by the father of this nation, the Siri Guru Gobind, became the father of the Khalsa so that nobody in the Khalsa order should be orphan. No parents can put or pollute anybody’s consciousness; we were so much given freedom and exactness of life that Guru Gobind Singh presumed the role of a father and Mata Sahib Deva presumed the role of a mother so that no individual sections can happen and we are so individually divided, once I was asked to sponsor a Saint I respected and I expected a problem but when SGPC sent me the directions I as a Siri Singh Sahib I had no alternative. Either I agreed that that is my supreme body and or I don’t agree. So when the direction came from SGPC so we did it. It was a good cause to do it. But you basically have to understand, I ask a question, ‘what you want to do.’ He said, “I’ll do nothing, Guru does everything.”
It gave me a deep satisfaction that we have sponsored a very right cause, it was the best we could do. And normally one day I was at Guru Ram Das ashram in San Francisco, and I was asked that a great Saint has come and I should also visit, so I decided to go and see. But I got very mad, very annoyed, I wanted to get up and beat him. Had he not been blind I would have beaten him. That fool never understood the fundamental law of the Sikh religion that we are sitting in the presence of the Siri Guru Granth, a living Guru, and he started adjectiving certain personality, so and so is great, such and such is beautiful, and I told him, I said, “You are in attendance of Siri Guru Granth. You are supposed to tell us something about the Guru, about the Guru’s thought and even you have to recite a Shabad you recite it as you are in attendance, you are doing the hazree, now if you have to praise me or praise Sardar Jaul, or praise somebody you can do it outside. I cannot accept the phenomenon that you sit in the presence of Siri Guru Granth and praise another low human being, which is mortal.” I said, “If Siri Guru Gobind Singh the father of the Khalsa would have been sitting in attendance in his grace, in his presence and you would have been in attendance, would you be allowed to do that?”
And if we cannot meditate this much only we say it is the soul of the ten Gurus. We say everyday in Ardas,
“Zairaa Zahoor, Hazra Hazoor, Adal Kala Parpoor.”
Then why we live in a lie? Why we lie to ourself? These are the fundamental questions, which I wanted to arouse in your mind today. I have come I’ll go away. I have to come to give my attendance to my Guru. I don’t come, I don’t go, my coming and my going is just as your coming and your going. Whether you are fat or you are thin, whether you are tall or you are small, whether you are rich, you are poor, your coming and going has two purposes. Either you walk at Guru’s way or you walk at your way. I didn’t like the Bibis to sing that side and my brother to play it here. It is not right. She should have come here, he should have sat here and they should have given their attendance to the Siri Guru Granth because it is Guru’s Shabad, which we recited. And whether we are three people. It doesn’t matter. But our attendance should be towards the presence of the presiding deity, presiding Isht and one thing you must understand, we call our Sikh religion as Sahaj Yoga.
There is a difficulty about it because there is no hardship required because we have the proper key. If a musical instrument does not have the proper key, it does not make any effect whatever you may do. Exactly there is no in between person between a Sikh and his Guru. You must understand. No Saint can initiate you; no holy man can make you holier. Don’t be mistaken. No worship, no Tapa, no Japa, it is a time-consuming factor. But when a Sikh sits with his Guru and Guru and Sikh talk together that is where union happens. It is surprising I know a what they call it, a Sindhi Sikh, and I attended that morning in his house, how they worship Siri Guru Granth.
And I wanted to touch his feet; he wanted to touch my feet, so we almost wrestled with each other. And I said, “You are the greatest person I have met. You know how to worship a Guru and even I never knew about it, in future I will take care of it,” it was so personified, it was so beautiful and he said bless me, I said, “No, I sit down and you don’t bless me, you won’t do it I know but you touch my leg, so that it may always have that dedication to the Guru Granth, the Siri Guru Granth, the Guru of the time and space.”
I have to share these thoughts, I know you are all very hard working community and many of you are looking at the watch, you got to go to work and I have to do what I have to do but it was in accordance what I as a humble being understood of a page of the Sikh Religion as experimented in the western world and hopefully if the words of the Siri Guru Gobind Singh the father of the Khalsa has to come true, this religion must flourish and must be on its right foundation. This is a beautiful palace, beautiful than your all palaces built by Siri Guru Gobind Singh but you never have a what they call it that sweeping thing even to take out the cobweb.
He gave in the fountain of this in the very foundation of this religion his four sons and entire self but what we did is we never cleaned it, we never cared to look at it, we never appreciated it and all we did is boast about it. But my personal feeling as a human being what I have seen in these years, time has come then people will rehabilitate this old house into its original glory and shine, and we will share the truth given to us from the Nanak’s time to Guru Gobind Singh’s time with the entire world. “Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa, Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh.”
Sangat: “Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa, Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh.”
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Read and listen to the full lecture here
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