Excerpts by Yogi Bhajan, 9/10/95, Berlin, Germany

Once, just for fun, I started looking at somebody’s hand, and twenty people wanted to get their hands read. You all want to know your tomorrow but you don’t care to know your today. Isn’t it amazing that we call ourselves civilized human beings, with churches, religious teachers, yogis, swamis, preachers, and counselors—all with tons of status—yet you are all mentally alone? There are books, libraries, and magazines, but you are still unfortunate and still alone. You have never been taught that this loneliness is a power. You don’t have a practice, so every day you become harsher and harsher and harder and harder.You have never been taught to become you. You have been taught to become “somebody.”

We have been taught wrongly for all these years. We have never been taught to be peaceful or how to achieve peace of mind when everything is upside down. Our existence is not a peaceful, tranquil existence. You have a very powerful magnetic psyche. You can just attract things, you can get things, but no, you don’t have that training to do so. Instead you sweat and hassle and go after things. Is that living? Hustling and going after things? Your own dog will not do it. You have God and yet you are beggars and hustlers, requesting everything: “Please, can I, may I, should I, would you love me? Would you like me?” What kind of life is this?

Because I travel everywhere, I see this common disease, this sickness. We are suffering because we do not trust ourselves. It’s simple. There is no self-trust. We look in the mirror. We want to look good and then make speeches. We want to convince each other. Don’t we know each other?

It’s very important that you are just you, even though you may be sick, hungry, or tired—just you are you. Just that. That’s very important. Think, when you are not you, how miserable that situation is.

The time has come to become your own master. Stop chasing masters. Become your own reality and stop chasing religion. Stop chasing God, be you. Become your own God. In the beginning, in the middle, in the end it is you and you alone. So live well in your inner peace, in your inner strength. And when you feel weak, call on your soul, your friend. To start, sit down, and breathe one breath per minute.* In exactly thirty seconds your soul will start communicating with you. In three minutes you can change your mood. Then why are you suffering?

On the average you take fifteen breaths per minute. Suppose you had one hundred years to live. If you breathed at the rate of one breath per minute, you could live for fifteen hundred years because life is measured by breath, not by years or calendars.[1] When you are out of balance your breath will be shallow and fast, and you will average twenty to twenty-five breaths per minute. In good health you breathe ten to twelve breaths per minute, and in the best mental state, you breathe five to seven breaths per minute. But if you practice one breath per minute for eleven minutes a day, you can be in control of your mind.

The time has come. You have to be you—a beautiful, bountiful, blissful human. Nobody can create you. God created you in His own image. Don’t create your own images. Just have one image of you as you being the being of God. It’s very human and that is what the Age of Aquarius is all about—the “New Age.” It will be the Age of humans and peace, love, and service. We shall all live as one family and wars will cease. Humans and humanity will prevail again. As the Berlin Wall fell, other walls will fall. We will all be united under one God, one spirit, one self.

* 1 Minute Breath: Tune in the with Ong Namo, Guru Dev Namo. Sit with a straight spine. Inhale deeply for 20 seconds, hold for 20 seconds, exhale for 20 seconds. You may start with 10 seconds and build up.

© The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan