May the long time sun shine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you, guide your way on.

If you’ve ever taken a Kundalini Yoga class, you have heard and sung this song.  Here is an excerpt from a lecture on January 28, 1985 by Siri Singh Sahib Ji, where he discusses the power of singing this song.

“May the long time sun shine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you, guide your way on.

You know we have been singing this for fifteen years, sixteen years. Sometimes it brings tears in my eyes. A yogi is not supposed to cry, but I am such a yogi who cries on everything.  It’s funny. It’s very funny. Where people cry I don’t, where people can’t even cry, it starts going, but anyway….

May the long time sunshine upon you.  What a blessing. We bless everybody.  And all love surround you.  Not of God only, but all. What an affirmation.  And the pure light within you.  Not your “light”, pure light is the radiant body, the soul. Soul is the direct descendent of the radiant body. Radiant body is the direct shield of the soul. Pure light within you.  And we don’t say follow me.  We say guide your way on.  Keep going.  And we sing it.  It gives us a feeling of ourself.  But sometime we should sing it within ourself.

Understand that you know all. When your adversity, you can laugh at and when your tragedy, you can bring into a humor and when you can excel, God is already sitting in you, there is no place else to find it.”

Listen to versions of “May the Long Time Sun”

Read about how this song came to be sung after all Kundalini Yoga classes.

Special Thanks:  May the Long Time Sun Shine Upon You was originally written by Mike Heron from the Incredible String Band.  For more information and gratitude to Mike Heron for this beautiful song, please see the article “Where the Long Time Sun Shine Upon You… Where it all Began”, shared by 3HO.