Yogi Bhajan Lecture: Love is the Totality of the Self

Excerpts from a lecture on April 5, 1994 (scroll down to watch the full video)

Do you know what love is? Love is an absolute power of self-totality. Love is not what you think love is. Love is a strength. Love is a goodness, like Godliness. There is no limit to it. There is no shortage in it. There is no bargaining in it.

Where there is love, there is no question. Where there is a question, there is no love. Then it becomes business. Love is the totality of the self.

When you do not know who you are, how can you know who somebody else is? But we do talk to each other and we love each other. We relate to each other. We require that little warmth. We want to know. Otherwise, if love could be purchased, everybody would have paid a thousand dollars a pound for it. You know it doesn’t work that way.

We would like to give you an experience of love within yourself so that you can understand your growth and you can understand how much you love yourself to find yourself. If you cannot find yourself, you can never find anybody you want to find.

Our relationships and our communication are just to pass time. And our being emotional and commotional is to mark the space. That is how humans understand time and space—by emotions, by feelings, by commotions, etc., etc., etc. 

Surrender doesn’t mean cut off your head. It doesn’t mean lie flat and let everybody walk over you. Surrender means, “Thou shalt not give your ego a chance.” And when you don’t have an ego. then everybody is your amigo. Then there is no black, no white, no young, no old, no sick, no healthy and absolutely nothing. The moment you become zero, the One, the Creator, will stand with you. You shall live as ten. And that’s what they call opening the tenth gate. But first you have to become zero.

Relationship: wife and husband. Husband is always afraid of wife. Wife is always afraid of husband. True? There is no love. Children are afraid of parents. Parents are afraid of children. So, love doesn’t rule you. What rules you is fear. Fear of each other. Phobia. Phenomenal phobia of your spirit, your soul. That’s why you can’t surrender. Because you have logic and reason, time and space.

What I am trying to request of you to do, as human being to human being, as person to person, is that the Age of Aquarius is bringing unexpected changes so we should develop our strength and our talent and our IQ and our intelligence and our consciousness to face it gracefully. It’s a time to be patient; to listen to each other. It’s a time to be loving to each other. It’s a time to be kind to each other. It’s a time to not treat anybody in any ungraceful way or to be shallow. It’s a time to say, “Hello!” It’s a changed time.

Because not only you, but everybody is going to be lonely and you are a part of that cycle of loneliness. Therefore, you would like to create a relationship. It’s a time to agree, a time to listen, a time to cooperate. It’s a time to trust. Love without trust does not exist. Love is a strength of trust. Trust is the test of love. When you love, you trust each other. When you don’t, you don’t. Don’t camouflage the word “love” and not trust each other.

End of Class Prayer: Oh, my humble soul, far away into the existence of the maya and the tattvas of the planet Earth; into the consciousness of all other human beings, with love and devotion, to cause and effect. Give me the harmony, the humility, the strength and divinity to serve. May I serve without question. May I live without answers. May I trust God. May I see everyone as His, as I see myself to be. And give me the strength and height of love in which all are God and good. In the goodness of that, may I live in peace and harmony. Bring us together as humans in the light and the divinity.

Sat Nam. Thank you very much and God bless you all.

This lecture can be found in the KRI Teacher Training Manual Level 2: Authentic Relationships