Simran and Seva

This lecture by the Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan appeared in the summer 1975 Beads of Truth.

The mystery in the religious world has been that the religious leaders have been telling people to perform certain actions, without telling them why they should do those actions. You have to tell a person why he is to do a thing, then how he is to do it, and what the stages are in doing it, and what will happen in all of those stages. Even this is not satisfactory, you must also say why one should not miss doing it, and what the effect of not doing it will be.

That is why the science of Yoga begins with “Yams and Niyams”, the ‘do’s and don’ts’. Life was known to be a matter of cause and effect (they called it the Law of Karma) and this procedure of ‘do’s and don’ts’ is just an attunement with the law of cause and effect through the under­ standing of vibration. These laws of living are just as true today as they were then, only today we read “As you sow, so shall you reap”, but in reality, there is no difference, whether you call it the law of cause and effect, or the law of karma, or a proverb from the scriptures.

One of the greatest beauties in the science of Yoga is the understanding of how the mind works. The intellect gives you a thought wave, you run, or you stop. Every thought which comes to you through the thought wave, you stop and think, and if you correctly channel the thought wave, you will never be in trouble in life. You need not correct yourself, you need not correct something, correct your ethics, your morals, your ‘yes’ or your ‘no’.  If you ever have to correct something, correct your thought wave. All Yoga has been teaching you is to think to the root of the thought and thus eliminate the thought in a deep meditation. Eliminating the thought through the process of meditation is one process but there is also a process to correct the thought wave. That is why Guru Nanak gave the technique of Simran.

The structure of the Sikh Dharma is based upon two pillars; on one side, Sim­ ran, and on the other side Seva. Simran is meditation, in the form to correct the thought. The science of Simran has not yet been taught on this earth. It was maintained as a mystery and today we are opening an unread chapter. It has always been taught on a one-to-one basis, but we have recognized that we must progress on to the oneness of that basis. The repetition of the Nam is Simran. When the Guru gives a mantra, that is Simran. Each of these is one of the directions and it will work very well, but it will not work totally. The other aspect is Seva. Seva is service You can always win everyone with Seva. Good manners and the attitude of service can serve you even in defeat. Goodness is good everywhere, and the way to achieve goodness is the science of Simran. The raising of consciousness through the ‘chakras’ to the ultimate chakra is the science of Kundalini and it is also known as the science of Simran. The power of Simran, the power of the syllable, of the Holy Word is actually the science of correcting the thought wavelength of the individual psyche. It is a complete and total science, and it is the root science of Yoga. With­ out this science, which has been kept as a mystery, the science of Yoga is not complete, and that is why there are millions of yogis, but nobody knows what Yoga is.

The process of life is commitment and experience: Simran and Seva. Nobody can correct his state of mind without making the mind to commit or making the mind to experience.  Now let us look at ourselves: You have an obligation to your own ‘you’ within you, that ‘you’ demands that you must provide it with the experience and without that experience, it is not satisfied. You always talk to your own ‘you’, each day receiving directions, each day you know that you are not do­ing the right thing and you keep promising each day that you will do it.  And then you come out before the world and say that you are a very honest person.  It is fascinating that we don’t have the wisdom to see how we function, and this is what maya is. Each one directs himself, and each one receives directions. Let us ask, what is worry? Worry is nothing but the conflict between you and ‘you’. What is doubt? Doubt is because there is a tremendous split between you and your ‘you’ and you don’t want to agree to it and then deny a lot of things to yourself. That is why your scene is never together because you are never together with your own ‘you’.

Science has told you that you have a subconscious. Your subconscious is your ‘you’. It talks to you, speaks to you, it suggests to you, it receives satisfaction from you, and it takes a new promise from you every day. You are ethically, morally, and by experience and by virtue of existence, feeding your subconscious every moment. This is where Guru Nanak came with the greatest science of the world. He said to keep feeding, but to change the direction and introduce the greatest mystical science of Simran. The intelligence you have can be determined by how much mastery you have over your thought wave.

The self wants to experience the self within the lifetime, and that goal has made a person compassionate, made a person tolerant, made a person to listen, to argue by use of reason and logic. The whole process was a technique developed by the human mind to understand the in­ fluence of each other on the inner self. Sometimes you talk to somebody, and you say that you want to think over something and come back to talk about it tomorrow. You want to grind that thought within the self, and you want to then come to a judgement and to com­mit. The present generation relates to understanding the ‘vibes’ and the older people used to relate to thoughts. Vibration is the total sum of the experience of the thoughts, so the new generation now talks of experience and experience is Seva.

Now what will Simran do? Simran will shape your consciousness.  It will raise you to be more aware.  That is all. It will widen your horizon and you will see better; you will see more. Then what will you do? You’ll serve – Seva. As you go to the top of the mountain, somehow you reach it, and you see the beauty around and you want to share. A man cannot be without sharing himself. That is the total problem. Therefore, everybody does not want to correct himself, he wants to correct somebody else.

The first action of Simran is that you have to recognize that you have a complex ‘you’. That is the first expansion, and second is, that without your knowledge, your inner self has the right to exchange the thought wave and therefore you must administer your outer ‘you’ to challenge that authority of complete dictatorship of inner you and you make the inner you to look and compromise with your outer you.

There is tremendous evidence available that each person has a set personality which we call a ‘personality in destiny’, and the outer self which is called a ‘personality in time’. If the personality in time’ is delivered to its destiny, one has achieved liberation. The soul has to reach its destination, and because it has started from infinity, it must end in infinity and to get into the Oneness of God the person has to learn to be one. One is only that one whose inner self and outer self experiences the same thing at the same moment for the same oneness. This can only happen when you have gone above action and reaction. This stage can only be received in experience through the power of Simran. The intellect is the pilot of your inner self and intelligence is the pilot of your outer self. Who should have the control? The outer self, because the outer self is what you represent to the world and the inner self is what you are. If you represent consciously to the world what you want to represent, that is what awareness is. The being is known by his actions.  And what controls the actions? Commitment. And commitment is nothing but the action of the inner self to support the outer self. Commitment is truth, and the achievement is the experience of your own commitment.

This unity between the inside and outside is what is needed. And Simran is the direction from the outside to the inside, to go into the self. In other words, the science of Simran is nothing but to have immense power of Seva, service; and through service you can win the world. There is no other way known to the man. Through service you can maintain friendship, a relationship, conduct, a political career, a religious career, or any career. The only power of a human being on the other human being is how much one can serve the other. What is service?  Service is tolerance towards the other man’s nuisance and the directing of your energy so that the person may gain. If a person will gain, he will feel happy and if he will feel happy, he will confide in you, and when he will confide in you he will work according to you, and he’ll work more and gain more until he gains everything he wanted. If he gains what he wanted to gain ultimately, then he goes into the infinity of gain.  Even a businessman can reach God, and as a politician it is more easy. You gain through service to carry the confidence of each one who has confided in you. As a religious man it is the most easy.  You simply have to say, think, act and represent God. Start representing God and then you will become what God is.

The human mind can change the thought direction with the power of Simran. Now where do we find a specific procedure well established and qualified, where the power of Simran can be seen and where it was experimented on the spiritual world? Ten men of God came, and they started with the people who were the most rejected; self-depressed and totally self-condemned people; and they started processing them through the process of Simran. The more Truth they found, and the Truth they found, the more ‘Satya’ came to them. Energy, or Kundalini energy, means Satya.  The power of Sat. The more power came, the more they did Simran; and they went from self-condemned to self-enlightened, self-inspired saints. And then they became soldiers.  They became the protectors of the sainthood. Actually, the protectors of the sainthood are known as Khalsa, and the Khalsa is the body created for the protection of the sainthood, and it does the protection through the action. That is why the master, Guru Gobind Singh gave the family name of Khalsa, so that the very effect of it would remind the person, the inner self of the person, that the outer person lives in that commitment.

Now what is a thought pattern? A thought pattern is a word, a series of words, and the combination by which the thought pattern can be changed is mantra. That is why the Siri Guru Granth Sahib is nothing but mantras. A mantra is that which is a finite direction towards infinity, a finite direction in existence through the thought pattern. That is why the mantra given is ‘Wahe Guru’. ‘Guru’ is experience of the technology of directing the thought pattern and ‘Wahe’ is the acknowledgement and the statement of experience.

If you look into this whole mystery and open it up, you’ll be surprised to see that it is a simple science of humanology, where years of experiment have arrived at the point of understanding how man can conquer his fear and become fearless. You have to become fearless to meet the Fearless.  You have to become great to meet the Great.  You have to become infinite to meet the Infinite. You have to become beyond time and space to meet the One who is beyond time and space.

Read the original 1975 Beads of Truth Article