Yogi Bhajan Lecture: Love is My Last Chance

Excerpts from a lecture by the Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan on March 28, 1994

Love is my last chance in life—I have to love, first of all, my own consciousness. I have to love my own character. I have to love my own characteristics. I have to love my own dignity. I have to love my own dimension. There are so many things I am supposed to love for myself, before I say even one word of, “I want to love you.”

I understand that when you are young, you want a soul mate, or you want a friend or a relative or a lover or a husband, etc. It doesn’t give you anything, because the incomplete is relating to the incomplete.

Try to understand the very simple logic of it: one incomplete human is helping another incomplete human. It means, I have a broken leg and I am trying to help a person who has a broken arm. So that does not mean that I am not helping and that does not mean the other person is not getting help, but this kind of living and this kind of situation doesn’t make sense.

Now, love as you understand it is very different than what love is. You have sensual love, you have sexual love, you have personal love, you have conditional love, you have unconditional love, etc. Actually, love is a self-acknowledgement. When I love myself, I can be so rich that I can love everybody.

The “depending” love—because you love me, you depend on me, and I love you, so I depend on you—is a business, because I expect this, you expect that—that is not love. That is called softening the way. Meaning one thing, doing something different.

Love is one word most abused in the human vocabulary. Because the first condition of love is, when you are in love or you love somebody, you have no question to be asked. Where there is a question, there is no love. Where there is a condition, there is no love. Where there is an expectation, there is no love. Where there is jurisdiction, there is no love. Where there is a territory, there is no love. That which can be defined and have dimension is not love.

When a child wants to go and catch a piece of burning fiery wood, his mother jumps in and stops him and pushes him away. It’s a very cruel act, a harsh act. It’s an act of enforcement, but it’s an act of love, it’s a protection, it’s a mother’s bond for the child, protection.

These are the faculties in which we act under love. In love we honor. In love we grace people. In love we support. In love we sacrifice. In love we give. In love we elevate. In love we will pray.

Love and fear are two forces. Whatever you do under fear, it shall take your life away from you. Whatever you do under love, it shall give you fulfillment. But love will not satisfy your emotion. That’s the unfortunate part of it. Love will not satisfy your neurosis. Love will not satisfy your ego.

Love and God have no dimension. Ego has every dimension. So when you are in love, you have no dimension. When you have dimension, you are not in love. And this cross reference of life takes away 99.9% of your life and you are totally blank at the time of death—you did not accomplish your one chance which God gave you through a human body, and love was your last chance.

You couldn’t love anybody without condition. You couldn’t love anybody like God: without control, territory, expectations, and whatever. If anybody wants to experience God, the person may talk for years and years about everything, every knowledge. You can read a library, book after book.

But if tons of love do not show up from that person, and his projection is not totally clean and clear love, the rest is just bait. It is called hooker’s paradise. This love is nothing but “hooker’s paradise.” We make bait out of love and put a hook in it to get our job done. It is very destructive.

Those who understand life and love have endurance. They do not act childish, and they do not act passionate and entangle themselves in commotion and neurosis. Their words are like jewels and they are conscious like the brightness of God, and their strength is like Infinity. These are the people who really are the beloveds of God, and they enjoy love as the last chance of life.

Otherwise, Maya* is so bewitching, people forget their reality and they forget so badly, that at the last day, they can’t remember why they didn’t prepare for the last day. You prepare in your life for tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. Every tomorrow shall become today to face you, and today you always face. But the day you start preparing for that last day by reminding yourself, “When I quit the planet, what legacy am I going to leave behind? And what link shall I have with Infinity”—then you are liberated.

I have never forgotten that God has made me a human, never for a moment.  And I never misunderstand that He could have made me a donkey. And He could have made me a snake. And I never forget that God made me a wise man. And I would have been very grateful if He had made me a foolish man; then I wouldn’t have to exert myself. 

So in wisdom, in equality, in ecstasy of consciousness, you have to understand that God made you for a purpose. Please learn to deliver that purpose, not your ego. That’s the secret.

*The illusion of the reality of sensory experience of one’s self and the world.

Watch the full lecture here:

The excerpt above was published in the May, 2008 Aquarian Times Magazine: