Excerpts from a lecture given on September 12, 1969

Every day is a beautiful day. Every day we must put in effort to cleanse our body and purify ourselves so that we can create so much energy in us that we can live well. To live healthy you have to have contact with the cosmic energy. Food, this, that—everything is groovy, but we have to have another contact in our life and that is with our own prana.

These pranas will go away and the grave will be your destiny. To make them powerful to prevail within us, we have to work on them so that our last time, when it is to come, it should be graceful. We should not feel pain. If we have to die, it should be a normal, cool death. To have a beautiful, cool death is the most important thing. We don't want to go into the grab of death in a miserable way. We have to do certain things where we may have perfect control on our prana and apana, so that when the time comes, it is a reality; it is a truth. Then we can go with grace.

We know that we are going. Then we have to close eyes, good bye everyone, and there we go. We have to go—that is one fact, one truth, one reality. You can't be afraid of that truth. There's one most beautiful thing and that is you will be in a position to go. You will know how to go and you will be just saying, “Wow! Here we go.”

The only advantage you have with this human body is that you can recognize the glory of the divine Creator, so that you can assure Him that, “Well, you gave me a chance and I had free will. And I remember you. Now give me liberation." And with that love, that Cosmos will love your prana.

Your existence is a very, very thin thing. You don't exist, you are nothing. You are the creation of the prana. Prana comes from where? From the Cosmos. These pranas want to rest with the Cosmos, but they can't rest. They are thrown out time and again, time and again—what for? Because the karmas are not finished. That is the problem.

The question is, now or never, and it is up to us. It is a very delicate thought but it is a truth. We have to liberate our prana and for that we have this body, but what do we do? We think this body is everything and prana is nothing. And when there are no pranas, they throw you out in one minute. They won't keep you in. You can't stay in that house whose registry is in your name, whose paper is in your name—for one minute. Immediately the telephone starts going, "So and so is dead. Come on, let us throw him out."

If you can come from your grossness to your delicate-ness that is your prana, you don't need anybody. That is the only little truth you have to understand. Pranas makes atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make elements, five elements make this Earth. The basis, the essence is the prana in it. Those pranas as a unit want to go into the Cosmos and they don't want to come back, but the karmas of this body are such they have to come back. This is the whole game. This chess game, this world is all that.

We speak of liberation. When we learn through the teacher of time, we don't get liberation, we pay off the karma. But when we listen to the word of the teacher and we act, we take precautions, and we don't suffer, then our balance sheet is positive. And any man with a positive credit is respected.

Bodies are as useless as palaces where nobody will guide you. What is the use of having a palace? And what is the use of having an establishment when there is no happiness? One has go deep into the earth and decompose and from there a seedling will come which will grow into a plant, and that seedling is what? That seed is what? That is the truth, the naam, and that is growth.

Seedlings are what? That is the truth and then that truth becomes a Banyan tree and then it spreads and you do not know which was the original one. All becomes the same. When truth prevails in a man he becomes like a big Banyan tree. Then branches spread all over. From his body you smell truth. You go to a garbage can, what you will smell? You go to a place where there are flowers and you will like the smell.

Exactly in us that flavor, that fragrance shows what type of man we are. This show, this haughtiness, this pride of wealth and authority, what does it matter to a man of God? What does he care? He just watches and laughs.

The game of prana is a very delicate game. We have to cross the barrier of foolishness. We can't go along with that hefty, heaviness. A man of God is not supposed to take a bell in his hand, "I am a man of God." It is not an ice-cream truck: ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting. Anywhere he lives, anywhere he goes, he is known because his fragrance spreads. When you will be clear and clean, you will be recognized as clear and clean. You are what your projected personality is and that's all it is.

Some of you are just bound down by earth, by flesh and bone. You have to reach the level of equal, then higher consciousness. You can't fool yourself. Keep on befooling yourself, it is immaterial. Go on wasting your time and one day you will be short of time. It is like that.

Your spiritual being has to be looked into. Those unfortunate people who cannot understand this theory, they suffer—and we are not here to suffer, we are here to liberate ourselves. Remember, life has no importance. It may be very important for those who are blind to the truth. It is very unimportant if you understand what reality and truth is. As long you are away from reality and truth, you are blind and you live in the gross world, the thick funky world. Take this to heart with you. The truth is there are seven seas, and I am just one drop in all the seven seas, but all the time I was thinking I am a big ocean myself.

© The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan