Yogi Bhajan Lecture: Look to Your Vastness

Excerpts from a Khalsa Women’s Camp (KWTC) lecture on July 10, 1986 (scroll down to watch the full lecture video).

Without You, Nothing Exists 

What is a home? What are children? Without you, what exists? I understand that you can become an engineer, a doctor, the president. You can become president of the United Nations and rule the whole world. You can be anything. But I want you, as a woman, to understand just one thing: that without you nothing exists. If nothing exists without you, you have to be very comprehensive.

With all the medical advancements, it is still not possible that men will ever become pregnant. They will never bear children; you will. Whatever you give physically, electromagnetically, through your communication, your vibration, your mental thoughts; from the day of conception to the 120th day to delivery; that is the foundation of the child.

Whatever you give in psyche, in communication, in trust, and in base to the man; that is the man. This cannot be denied. This doesn’t mean you cannot be an engineer. You can be anything. You are the pivot of the whole thing. So, if this is true, then why not make it good?

Without you there is no family unit. There’s nothing without you. It’s not possible. Every effort has been made to debar and degrade the woman, to make her a slave. When there were tribal wars all the men were killed, and all the women were taken away as prisoners. Even then you were valuable. Look at the history of man. With one smile from you he can build everything; with one frown from you, he becomes insecure, that is it. All that you do, the whole paraphernalia, is not necessary. What is necessary is you within you.

The scriptures say, “When a woman loses grace, the world goes darkest.” Simple line: When you shine, God excels.

Trust Your Strength

Normally we just say “woman,” or “female” and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a very unconscious expression. Within this unconscious expression, you have somehow been told that without a man, you are incomplete. You can call it years and years of indoctrination, or psychological merger, or electromagnetic field and psyche. But the reality is that for the first three years, a female child will only relate to the mother; and from three years to seven years, she will want to relate to the father. If that mother and father situation is not complete and fulfilling, there will be a gap, a cavity that will hurt later on in years.

The life, the home and the marriage, is not based on logic, reason and argument. It is based on trust. There is nothing more evil than a woman when she loses trust. And it’s not trust in the man, it’s trust in yourself! When you lose trust in your own dignity, your own grace, your own power and your own psyche, there’s nothing to it.

In your firmness lies your grace. You have to understand that the environment in which you are developing yourself as a woman cannot be emotional.

The short temper is man’s trade. God didn’t give you a short temper. Whether you can bear a child or not, whether you are pregnant or not, whether you are going to have children or not, whether you get married or not, whether you want to be single or not, is not the point. In your manufacture, your makeup, patience, grit, tolerance and grace are there. They are in you. They have to be in you because you are made to be a mother, a potential mother. Your hormones, your nervous system, your biorhythm and your psyche are made in a very special way. Not to recognize that this is a woman is the biggest blunder on Earth.

You Are the Power and the Prayer

Vengeance, anger, fighting and being physical should be your last resort. You should be well trained, artistically trained, in handling life. Life is an art which is to be lived as a science; that is the motion of a successful woman. You don’t have to become successful; you are successful. Just don’t create bum situations.

You are taught that when you are old you are no good. What happens? At 40 years your brain jumps out and falls into the drain? Why is it that only lust is your life? Why isn’t it true that light is your life? You are the light. Your touch, your feeling, your word, your saying, your nursing, and your being are nothing but the light of God.

Why can’t one good sentence, one thoughtful word said, one peaceful projection from you change the life of anybody? Why do you barter your grace for this dust?

Would the United States be what it is today without women? Has modern technology given men the capacity to give birth to babies? Has your emotional intelligence been replaced by man’s own ego? 

There is nothing wrong with you except one thing: you undermine yourself. You don’t need anybody else’s strength. You are the prayer, and you are the power. The moment you put yourself down, you forget the existence of God. I am trying to invoke in you the fundamental light which you are. I’m not taking away your human values, negative or positive. I’m saying that along with your career, and your education, and your domestic and economic growth, please develop yourself. Each woman has to develop herself, along with all her other facets: businesswoman, professional woman, housewife, beloved, lover, girlfriend, and so on.

Woman has been associated with sex so much that nothing else fits these days. Just like graffiti in New York, you don’t even see the house, all you see is the graffiti. This is what has happened to woman. She has been so symbolized by sex, that everything else has been lost—her caliber, her grace. But I believe that if all of you reach out, then every woman can have that grace that is the psychology of the woman. Once that grace comes everything will be all right.

Men cannot stop the Third World War. It is not in their cells. But women can. A man can love a child, but he doesn’t go through the labor pain. He doesn’t have any practical experience of what it is to bear a child. No matter how rotten a woman may be or how great she may be, she knows what it means to carry a child nine months. Man doesn’t have that experience. So what can you expect out of him? The solutions on this Earth are not in the hands of men. The solutions on this Earth are in the hands of the woman, in the psyche of the woman.

In a country where woman is not respected, in a nation where woman is not wise, in a home where woman is not firm, there’s a lot of pain. You have to realize that a man who leaves at 7 o’clock, punches in at 8 o’clock and then comes home, through bumper-to-bumper traffic at 9 o’clock, expects the Heavens when he comes home, in spite of the fact that you have also gone to work all day.

You may even draw $2,000 more a month than he does, but when this guy comes home, he expects to be nursed and taken care of. He expects everything to be sweet and heavenly. Can you believe this nut? You say, “My god! What am I? A machine? A robot? What am I? What is he?” The truth is that in his ten trillion cells multiplied by 3, he needs comfort from you, and nature has given it to you—and not to him.

Your one touch to a child can give that child the strength to excel. Your one denial can totally make that child nothing, forever. That is how powerful you are.

In your caliber there is a consciousness. In that consciousness there is a caring being. In that caring being there is God. That’s all I am saying. Look to your vastness. Look to your bigness. Look to your totality. Don’t look to the little things.