Issue 40 - February 2015

[Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa]

Entering the New Age

             Some of the students of Kundalini Yoga who came to the Paonia Solstice gathering from the East Coast and elsewhere had learned everything they knew from teachers sent out by Yogi Bhajan.  They took this opportunity to see the Master for themselves.  Among that gathering of first, second, even third generation teachers, was the realization of an expanding community, extending from coast to coast, and to Puerto Rico,  Canada, Sweden, Israel and beyond.  Someone counted three hundred and seventy-five people in all.

            The nights were chilly with the mountain altitude and the mornings a little chillier with a bath in a swiftly-flowing glacier-fed irrigation ditch, but the air was pure and the energy electric.  Sadhana consisted of Kundalini Yoga and chanting “Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru” on the grass, between the trees. 

            The first days were held in sometimes maddening, sometimes exquisite, silence.  Wordlessness helped speakers value their words, the better to imbue their daily speech with clarity and purpose.  So it was “Sat Nam” and “Wahe Guru” for those eight days of meditation.  Each day, everyone contributed silent work to the farm, hoeing, weeding and watering.

            The food, closely supervised by Yogi Bhajan, consisted of a two vitalizing meals a day.  The diet for the first half of the Solstice consisted of rice with spicy curry.  For the last days, the morning meal was fruit, with salad for dinner.

            Yogi Bhajan gave talks every day.  He talked about his coming death and the need for his students to grow in discipline and self-reliance.  On the third day of the gathering, he talked of the dawning Aquarian Age. 

            “The world has changed.  The stars and heavens have changed, but still man is caught in his ego.  We know through the ancient science, the science of stars, astrology and numerology, that under the main period of the Saturn, the Kali Yug, the Golden Age is going to come, and we are in the cusp of that Golden Age.  The fifth of January 1961 was the day when Uranus started the projection of its rays on the planet Earth, through the reflection of the moon. 

            “Mind expanded.  People who were in the establishment, they became crazy.  “What has happened to the kids?”  That was their problem.

            “There was nothing happening to the kids.  Kids' minds started fluctuating more, more self-thought vibrating.  Their heart expanded.  They became nearer to the originality.  They wanted to know more reality than all what the establishment could offer. 

            “Mind represents the moon.  Now, Uranus the star of knowledge and truth, was reflecting, and because it travels from west to east, therefore the west got affected earlier than the east. 

            “On the fifth of January 1970, the cycle of nine years got completed.  Those nine years were of drugs and all other objects which could help man to break his ties with the establishment. 

            “Now, that was the universal mind.  Some people got affected less, some got more, some were happy, some were unhappy, but it did not work on the ego.  The pattern was the same.  There were teachers who could have taught the spiritual science, but they were calm, quiet, sweet, beautiful, which are the disqualifications of a  teacher. 

            “A teacher who is sweet, who is calm, who is sober, who is nice, who is decent is a nonsense because he'll never make sense in the long run.  It is much better to have one student and hammer him out, give him the shape, give him the reality, put your energy into him, and leave this world, than to have hundreds of thousands of disciples and just create nothing in them!  Half-created art is never perfect and has never a value.  But the Piscean Age was in force.  There was no way out.  The teachers were teaching the knowledge of the Piscean Age: “Believe me, and then you will know.”  And that is what a Piscean is: “Believe me first, and knowledge will come to you later.”     

            “The individual mind revolted against this because the stars of Uranus which was expanding the universal mind, also affected the individual minds, therefore the kids revolted against this theory.  They said, “Show us first!  Let us know first, and then we will believe.” 

            “It was not the job of an individual person.  It was the universal mind which was affected.  People started looking for something positive, something real.  They wanted to know, “If there is a soul, where it is?”  They wanted to feel the soul.  They wanted to exactly know the location of it.  They wanted to know what they were talking about, but there was no answer for that: “If there is a soul, where it is?”  And when you cannot show or make someone feel there is a soul, why you are talking about it?  So much soul...

            “Somebody said to a very great teacher, “I have got two soles and they are right under my feet.  If you cannot show me a soul, I'm not going to believe you.”  And he walked out of that gathering.

            “That challenge was very shaky.  It shook those who were holding the port of spirituality.  They became crazy themselves.  They never knew what to do about it.  Some were feeling that it is a time now to change.  Some actually changed, some did not, and so the time of nine years passed.  But the people were ready for it.  They were finding it anywhere where it is.

            “Now, these ten years, from '70 to '80 in which the twenty-first of June 1972 is a very important day if God will permit us, perhaps we will meet again.  We will celebrate that Solstice.  Twenty-first of June 1976 is a very bloody time.  That will be the test which will show the values.  Twenty-first of June 1980 the steel of everyone will be tested and if we cross that day, we'll enter the Age.  If not, God bless the Age.  Whosoever enters it will see it.  Now this is a destiny in the stars.  It is not and individual thought.  It is not something one can see or one can feel.” 

            “If that is so, then what is the preparation?  Now these are the main branches of yoga.  First, there's Hatha Yoga which nobody knows and everybody practices.  Hatha Yoga nobody knows.  Ha-tha, sun and moon energy.  Yoga means union.  Your headstand is not Hatha Yoga.  These are the preparations for Hatha Yoga.  The eighty-four postures, twenty-four mudras, three gunas, these are all preparations toward Hatha Yoga, and Hatha Yoga is a direct physical science.

            “Write it down so that tomorrow you may not just feel what that is.  Hatha Yoga is a science where directly moon and sun energy is united to raise the kundalini.  That is the purpose.  It requires twelve years under a well-established, knowledgeable guru.  And without that experience, a Hatha Yogi is not supposed to teach anybody else.  Now I am quoting the scriptures.  But in the west, Hatha Yoga has become a little bit of postures, a little bit of breathing exercises, and they feel that's all it is.

            “The mental part is a very important part.  Mind and breath is a very important part in Hatha Yoga that has been forgotten, that has not been practiced, and that is why Hatha Yoga has become nothing but a physical gymnastic.

            “You have to go to the meaning, ha-tha.  They are two words, sun and moon, yoga, yog, joining them at sushumna, that is the central nervous system, and through the praanayam that can be achieved, and when that can be achieve, what is the end of it?  You have to raise your kundalini, chakra by chakra, and you have to achieve the same thing which we have to do ultimately.

            “After that, comes raja yoga.  Raja Yoga is when under the guidance of a competent teacher you focus your mind energy on each centre of consciousness and raise your level of consciousness, by level and level, to the protection that your kundalini can raise to the lotus of a thousand petals.  And the sadhana, minimum time required is six years.  That is Raja Yoga.

            “Then comes before us Bhakti Yoga.  Be devoted.  Praise the Lord.  Forget everything else.  Within the lifetime somewhere God will bless you and your kundalini will rise and you'll be aware.  Bhakti Yoga: total devotion, selflessness and praise the Lord.  Nothing else is required for the Bhakti Yogi.

            “Karma Yoga: selfless work.  Serve everyone everywhere under all circumstances selflessly.  You should not get any reward for that work.  Within this lifetime are too many lives which may or may not follow.  You will be liberated.

            “Jnana Yoga.  Jnana Yoga is look at everything and bisect it, and see the cause of everything you see is God, and concentrate on that.  By working on that concentration, you will develop a habit through which you will see God through everything, and thus your consciousness will be related to the highest.  This is known as Jnana Yoga.

            “Mantra Yoga, which is a branch of the Laya Yoga.  That consciousness gets merged with the universal consciousness with the power of the mantra.  When that happens, all knowledge comes to that person.  If you perfect a mantra, you will perfectly reach God.  There is no duality.”

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Kundalini Yoga and the Universal Ego

            Yogiji spoke of Muhammed and Rama and Krishna.  Of land, woman and power: the three things that come to a man of inner strength.  He spoke of Jesus and Kundalini Yoga and Swami Vivekanada. 

            “Selflessness cannot be achieved through consciousness without universal consciousness.  And if you will not uncoil yourself, you will never be a universal self.  It is said that all rivers will end up in the ocean and all yogas will end up raising your kundalini.  It is not wrong.  It is not because I happen to teach it and you happen to learn it, therefore we are special.  It is not an ego trip.

            “If you read what Swami Vivekananda said in the book “How to Know God”, it is very clear there.  Whatever your little soul, that is the raising of the kundalini in you.  And Vivekananda said very clearly... 

            “Anyone has got “How to Know God” with you?  Yes, get me one.  I'll read you the very sentence from it.  Swami Vivekananda has quite completely and honestly written what the kundalini is. 

            “Do you have the book?  Bring it here!  You read in the second part: ''When,' says Swami Vivekananda, 'by the power of long internal meditation, the vast mass of energy stored travels up along the sushumna and strikes the centres, the reaction is tremendous, immensely superior to the reaction of dream or imagination, immensely more intense than the reaction of sense perception.  Whenever there is any manifestation of what is ordinarily called supernatural power or wisdom, there is a little current of kundalini must have found its way into the sushumna.  Only, in the vast majority of such cases, people have ignorantly stumbled on some practice which set free a minute portion of the coiled up kundalini.  All worship, consciously or unconsciously, leads to this end.  The man who thinks he is receiving responses to his prayers does not know that the fulfilment comes from his own nature, that he has succeeded by the mental attitude of prayer in waking up a bit of this infinite power which is curled up within himself.''  It is page one hundred and fifteen.

            “And if this breath belongs to a centre, definitely it is Kundalini Yoga, do you know that?  Those Vedanta people are the first, Vedanta and the Theosophical Society, they are the first great enemies of Kundalini Yoga.  And the man who established this lodge and this Theosophical Society, he got his kundalini raised through his Master in India.  He was the one person who experienced it and all he said was that you must study it under a competent teacher because the process is so quick.

            “The astral projection of the teacher must protect all the students.  That's the natural requirement.  That is why normally everybody cannot teach it.  So because they cannot teach it, they say it is dangerous.

            “It is dangerous because it is a very complicated and very powerful process.  It is very quick.  It is taught like heat, like light.  The teacher should start up your magnetic field and through practice, this should set you on the path. 

            “The distraction on this path is the ego.  When your ego comes up, you become an individual unit and you fall apart.  This is a science of contact and disconnect.  When through that contact for a sufficient time you get totally charged, then you have your battery working.  And that is where the secret is.

            “If in Kundalini Yoga it is said that we are ego-less, when the teacher sends you out, be a universal ego.  In that way God shall prevail through you.  And it is true.” 

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As Below, So Above

            For the first time, Yogi Bhajan introduced the Solstice gathering to White Tantric Yoga.  Shaktis and shaktimans sat as couples in row after row in the open air, as the Master directed their attentions to the highest heavens and the innermost reaches of their souls.

            The sessions could be gruelling.  One posture, the "dancing Shiva", balancing on one leg, facing one's partner eye to eye, went on for two, maybe it was three, hours. 

Before one particular crucifixion, Yogi Bhajan advised, "This will harness your horniness!"   The fortunate ones were just barely able to walk away after that exercise, but only just.  Bodies ached, minds resisted, but spirits... ah, they soared!

            The exercises could be fun as well.  One memorable exercise involved holding one of your partner's hands while using the other to remove one of their socks!

            One day, the inscrutable Yogiji put everyone into a meditation and disappeared into the cabin situated next to them.  He remained there for some time.  Meanwhile, the sun beamed down and roasted the determined yogis, as they kept on with their meditation.   

            Finally, the Master emerged from inside.  He surveyed the beaming yogis, and burst out,  "You idiots!  You dummies!  The sun is too hot!  What are you doing?  You have messed up!"

            He ascended the stage.  "Raise your hands up!"  Every hand raised up. 

"Stretch your fingers!"  Fingers stretched.                                                     

"Inhale!"   All inhaled.  "Now chant Saaaaaaaaaat Nam!"  And they did. 

            "Stronger and louder!"  They did! 

 "Louder!"  And they chanted and chanted, louder and stronger and louder. 

             At last, after some time, a wind began to blow, and clouds came overhead. 

             "That's better!"  Yogiji concluded.  "If you meditate properly, you will always have a cloud cover."

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Solstice Sadhana is No Retreat

             Near the end of the Solstice Sadhana, Yogi Bhajan emphasized the visionary purpose and exacting discipline of the gathering of yogis.

             “The idea to come for these ten days is to dedicate yourself to God so that all your fulfilment may be pre-fulfilled.  I am finding a bit of difficulty.  I thought you all love me, but I know you are cheats.  Some of you are breaking the law of talking.  I have very clearly said there are certain specific persons which have been allowed to talk.  Everyone else has to be silent up to the midnight of the eighteenth.  It was not done to make my position easy.  Not at all.  I wanted you to do a sadhana to preserve your mind energy. 

            “You have not to hassle here for food.  You have not to hassle here for anything.  You have to come to the class.  You have to just learn.  You have to be beautiful.  And therefore it is the best chance available where you can preserve your vibrating energy and you can just define it to a course, first by controlling it.

            “But I have fooled myself in some cases where I have seen people breaking this rule.  I don't think that is very good.  Self-deceit is the worst karma.  It will not bother me, but it is my job to inform you that it is not right for your interest. 

            “Certainly I am not crazy when I say go and have a dip in the morning in that cold creek.  The reason for telling you to go and have a dip in that cold thing is you have a habit to live in air-conditioned houses, so your nervous system does not have the proper weather conditioning.  Bringing you out in the open and letting you live out in the nature is to take you out of that atmosphere and in the morning when you jump into that canal, the cold water affects your nervous system and your circulation so nicely that you will find in ten days you will have a lot of better health then. 

            “It is a wonderful system.  And to keep yourself emotionally balanced, strong nerves are required.  Also, you will not catch cold.  When you have cold water and massage your body and rub it with a good towel, and then take a blanket and come here for the job, you will feel your heart and very healthy.  But if you just come out of your tent and sit down here you are going to catch cold anyway. 

            “Secondly, I will discuss those people who are assigned in the morning to do the mantra.  They should do it in such a hard way that people should sweat.  And we have all the mantras.  They are strong mantras.  They are very powerful.  So chant that way for the ten days in your one year for the sadhana which you have adopted. 

We want to make it beautiful to have maximum benefit out of it and it is all in your interest.

            “Tomorrow, you are going to be teachers.  You have to go through all the sadhana.  You will like your students to go through the sadhana.  Therefore basically you must go yourself through those sadhanas and have the experience.  Without the experience, you cannot sustain yourself.

            “When I saw people somewhere here playing ego games and all that kind of trips, I do not talk.  But don't misunderstand, I watch.  I watch everything. 

            “I want you to understand the final higher conscious state of man is when you can share the experience of the truth with others.  That is why I want you to have that experience of truth with you first.  We are here to develop one mind to relate to one God.  That's why we are here.  And here we have to learn to be totally egoless for ten days.  Therefore you must train your mind and tell it to become egoless so that you may have an experience of egolessness. 

            “When we call for food, some people are in their tents.  When it is time for sadhana, some people are doing something different.  It may be a little different from what you are supposed to do, but that little difference matters because it means the mind is not tuned into a particular way. 

            “It means you know the “G”, you know the “d”, but you do not know the “o”.  When you write “God” with a “G” and “d”, what it means?  How does it sound?  “Gd.”  “G” and “d” doesn't make the sound “God.”  “O” the organization, the organic part, is very important. 

            “Destroy your negativity, generate all positivity, and yourself you'll become a living God.  The difficulty is I am not working for myself.  I want to modify you so you become great and things will become smooth in the future. 

            “You do not understand.  You just come here to meet Yogi Bhajan and everything is groovy.  And we are just camping out and there is good food and that kind of stuff.  That is not it.  This is not a retreat! 

            “We have not come here to retreat.  We have come here to advance.  I heard news this was “a retreat.”  I don't keep a retreat.  I have never retreated.  Out of all my mistakes, I learn wisdom.  I do not lament and cry on my mistakes at all.  I do one hundred and one mistakes each second!  I don't care!  But my mistakes teach me what I must know.  Therefore I don't retreat and I won't let you retreat.  You have come here to advance yourself.  And do it quick, otherwise I can't wait! 

            “Therefore we have to condition our mind with that smooth stability that when you go back from here, you are nothing but teachers.  And believe me or not, there is only one link.  That is love. 

            “We know each other too well.  That's why I want you to be away from any other trip, from sexual trip, from power trip.  Lay aside all your cases.  Let them rest.  Regenerate yourself.  Renervate yourself.  Be true to yourself and become beautiful, so when you go from here, you may have a soul in you and your mind may relate to that soul.  And if that is ever gonna happen, then you will do it.”   

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 A Solstice Blessing

             “Guru Nanak has tried to relate to the man, to take him from this universe and make him relate to the supreme consciousness, but the uptightness of his nature, the fear in his nature, the training of the mind to become selfish makes us forget that we are all one soul, makes us forget there is a soul in everyone.  Therefore, you forget patience and you forget tolerance.  When we forget patience and tolerance, we forget love.  And when we forget love, we forget God.  It is a continuous cycle. 

             “When you forget one thing, you forget everything.  When you get Sister Greed in you, the other four sisters shall present themselves.  Nothing lives without anything.  One thing is never complete without the other thing. 

            “Therefore, I have to request of you one thing today:  Dear woman, you have come into this universe to spread the grace of God, therefore do it.  O man, you have come to dedicate yourself to God.  Assess yourself to this.  Write it down.  Let us all write that we entered this place on the tenth and we shall leave it on the twenty-first morning after our sunrise service.  Let us sit down and assess how much we have dedicated to our self God.  Let every woman be a divine mother, be a holy sister, be a beautiful child and inspiring wife.  Let her sit down today and assess herself how much she is graceful and how much grace of God is she.  And that shall decide the entire gracefulness of your life. 

            “If your relationship to the God within you is an established relationship, you'll become fearless.  You'll become non-emotional.  If your relationship is not with your soul, you will blow it up.  It is difficult to fight with five demons.  Somehow, they are going to get you.  And because we do not relate to our protector, who is going to protect us?  The divine power is within us. 

            “And don't be proud that you have money.  There are millions and millions of millionaires.  Don't be proud that you have a beautiful woman.  One woman is more beautiful than the next.  Don't be proud that you have children.  There are people who have got dozens of them.  And don't be proud of what you have.  On the spur of the moment, what you have can be washed away. 

            “You can only be proud of one thing, and that is if you have found the soul within yourself.  You can only be proud of one thing, and that is if you have found the selflessness within your self.  And then we become the grace of God.  Then there is nothing which can bother you.  Then there is nothing which can take away from you anything because you have been created by God and then God shall create all the circumstances to create happiness for you.  And when he creates the happiness, it is everlasting, God which we do not understand, the creator of this universe. 

            “Therefore, dear one, as we are coming to the Summer Solstice, the highest light of the year, the highest day of grace, the highest day when the sun energy, the life force prevails on this planet, I will like you to sit down and assess yourself, what you have been, how much you have been.  And on let this day be a day within you when you should leave something behind, some elementary pushing habit, some ego habit, something which keeps you away from your soul and makes you discourteous. 

            “May God bless you.  May he prevail through you.  May his grace be your grace.  May you become the true teacher of the Age of Aquarius.  May you confirm yourself to spread the truth and the light to the Aquarian Age.  May each one of you practice the grace of God and be grace of God.  Sat Nam.”

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Love And The Single Yogi

            This was one Solstice where more and more attention came to be focused on couples.  More of the hippies were abandoning their free love ways and wanting to settle in with the yogi, the Sikh, to find a good righteous Shakti, or Shaktiman to marry and maybe raise up some little yogi-Sikhs.  For many, it was "fixin' to marry" time.

            With Yogi Bhajan, it was easy, sort of.  You just told him you wanted to marry.  If he thought you were ready,, he would find someone for you.  Sometimes, he would find a perfect match for your soul right on the spot!  These marriages were not always painless.  Nobody said they were supposed to be, but if you could handle the pressures, they were very good for your soul. 

At Paonia, Yogi Bhajan actually held a meeting with the women and another with all the men to talk to them about the importance of married life.  He described marriage as a kind of yoga.  Two people entered into it and what came out was one unified soul.  At least, that was the idea.

            Even Ganga and Larry, and other teachers, were becoming actively involved in matching people up, making "perfect couples", finding people their soulmates.  They had someone in mind for a student who had come along to the Colorado solstice.  They told this fellow, Bob McMasters, a law student at Columbia University, not to bother Yogiji about it, but Bob's soulfelt longing took him to seek out the Master despite their advice.  He had never spoken directly with Yogi Bhajan before. 

            Yogiji listened carefully.  His eyes looked through Bob, as though he were pure glass.  Then, he pointed in the distance.  "Bring back that girl with the red bandanna!"

            Obediently, Bob followed the direction the finger had pointed, a little awkwardly.  He was near-sighted, and had some difficulty seeing anyone at any distance.  Finally, he found someone with a red kerchief and brought them back to see what Yogi Bhajan had to say.

            "No," Yogiji said, matter of factly, "not a man!  A woman!  Bring the woman with the bandanna!"

            Determinedly, Bob set out again, awkwardly and a little embarrassed.  Another red bandanna presented itself.  This time, it was... yes it was a young woman.  Stiffly, he tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Yogiji wants to see you."

            As he took her back to the Master Yogi, Bob's mind raced ahead of him.  "Why," it asked, "am I doing this?  There are millions of women in the world!  Why this particular one?"

            Yogi Bhajan smiled his approval.  "Your auras are blue like the ocean!  You will make each other happy." 

            Barry Rippens from Seattle also informed Yogi Bhajan of his desire to be married.  Yogiji send the word out to see if there were any ladies who would like to be married. 

            After a time, about a half dozen young women came to be interviewed by Yogiji in his cabin.  Once he had spoken with each of them, the Master said to Krishna, who had observed everything with some amazement, "I think that one might be the nicest." 

            A senior teacher was then asked to take the lady, named Erica, and introduce her to the man from Seattle, so that they could see whether they both felt the same way Yogiji did.  Barry could be seen by them, with his back to the cabin, up by the camp kitchen, on the top of a hill not far away. 

            The lady and her escort began to make their way along the path leading to the top of the hill. 

            Once they had almost ascended the hill, something happened.  The man's back straightened as he slowly turned to look.  His gaze fell on this lady, as hers fell on him.  Her escort stopped, and watched as they began to walk into the space between. 

They met.  They began to speak and, after some minutes had passed, the two of them turned away from the cabin, ascending the final distance of the hill.  Behind them, everyone could see the sun setting in heroic splendour as the couple strode and spoke.  There was so much to say.

            In all, twenty-two couples were married that Solstice.