 Leadership  |
Leadership
Excerpts from Address to Khalsa Council
Siri Singh Sahib Yogi Bhajan
April 5, 1995
In six years, it will be the turn of the century. You should understand what you’re up to. There are certain faculties of a leader. A leader leads. A leader is in charge of the pros and cons, of the consequences and sequences, and is responsible for now and tomorrow. A leader promises and leads people. The faculty that makes you a leader is when your word is effective. If you speak without wisdom, your words will be polluted and diluted, the power of your word will be depleted, and you will not be effective. We should speak with the sense that what we have said was in the shortest possible time and it has gone to the heart of the person, and that that person has received it one hundred percent. The word of a child, which sounds like a gospel truth to the other person, makes the other person feel at home, gives them a guidance of truth, and the strength and courage to deal with the future, and the strength to move on. Any word that is not the truth is not worth speaking. This is the kind of lea
dership that is needed--it lives.
But what will you do with your ego? There’s nothing much you can do with your ego if you have not reached a state of consciousness of totality. If you’re not a fully realized being and understand that you’re part of the Creator, you cannot help but have lived by ego. I’m not asking you to denounce yourself and become ego less. If you become ego less, you’ll fall apart. But when you utter a word that has ego in it, however great the truth is, it will not make an effect, it will be blocked. Are you willing to pay that cost? When you speak from your ego and not from your consciousness, you shall not be effective and you’ll lose that person.
You are Khalsa. You should never hurt a person, but you should never worship a person--that is your destiny. All these 25 years have brought you to this point today. Your Guru is Shabad Guru. It has a quantum effect on the grassroots of humanity--and on the human, on the square root of his excellence, which is the essence of the human. Try to understand the Siri Guru Granth Sahib. It is the permutation and combination of sound and music. It is surat (concentration) and Shabad (word), taal (to tune) and mayl (combination). It is exactly in raag (musical discipline) and poetic form. The words are very well chosen. You, who carry Siri Guru Granth on your shoulders and you who Siri Guru Granth carries in the future, are the leaders, but are you a leader sitting in this Council? Are you a leader outside this room? Are you a leader wherever you are or not? This you have to decide. A definition of a leader is a leader in life and after life; that amirtaa--that deathlessness--is our life.
It is amazing; I am 65 years plus. I had a teacher and I’m grateful. It’s not all the knowledge that I have, it’s the gratitude I have that all the knowledge is there. It’s called the Golden Link. Some people become twenty percent teachers and they think they are gods. Their egos take over and they get off the rhythm, the Golden Link, the reverence.
They don’t know how terrible it is. Because when you get off, your further students will get off. It is the mismanagement of destiny. There are teachers who can play as very successful teachers who have their constituents. Can you believe a teacher who is so stupid that he wants to reach to the students? Can you imagine that in the remotest possibility of spiritual sense? He doesn’t have the patience to sit and wait until the student appears. When a student comes, then the teacher is already there, and it will click.
I am supposed to hear you and know this is happening, and then say nothing? It is good you feel yourself very important, but have you realized what made me important? I gave you Dharma. I didn’t give you me. I gave you your destiny and the Guru, the Guru forever, the Shabad Guru. And I gave you the Guide which is the Guide of miracles, the Guru of karaamaats (miracles; Guru Ram Das). I was more honest, more truthful and more real. At least you should have learned that part of me.
One day my colleagues asked our teacher why he gives the worst work to me. This is the reply they got: "A man needs caliber, intuition and stamina, and if he has to be a tomorrow, he has to practice it today, and they all lie in the impossible. When the impossible becomes possible, a status is achieved. A state, status, and statement are the three faculties of a leader. He’s a born leader designated to be a tomorrow. I’m just serving that time...My job is to coin him to be real; his job is to work it out to be clear."
A teacher tries to make you real; a student has to be clear to be real. That is the established leadership; that is how the light passes on...I’ll be physically gone, but I’ll become spiritually great. You all will be part of that spirituality. You’ll carry that tradition. You have the tools to deal with every fool to bring him home. You are the pioneer leaders of the Age of Aquarius. Be humble--that’s good. The only time you’ll be handicapped is when you put everything into your personal perspective and conception, rather than in the mission and magnitude of totality. If you give yourself to the mission and magnitude of totality, the entire Mother Nature will come and love you.
You may be wondering that you come here only twice a year. (Khalsa Council meets twice a year and has been meeting for many years.) It took the Jews 40 years to cover a 2 1/2 year journey. There is one thing that is priceless on this planet, it is called maturity. Maturity comes from time, space, intuition, and wisdom. Guru has given you face and grace, dignity and identity. You have only one job to do--you have to live it.
I hope we shall be planning with the sense that we have to carry our brothers and sisters in faith around the world, and also carry us around the world. We, who are entering the Age of Aquarius in very limited numbers, right now have unlimited responsibility. We have to carry the 18 million Sikhs. You have to carry the 525 years of generational fact, your own generation now, and yourself. Plus you have to accommodate those who have been promised by God to come and join you.
One drop of rain, a little brooklet, a little rivulet, a little river, a big river, an ocean. I pray that you have my eyes and see it. That’s the way it’s going to be. Let’s get to work and put ourselves into it so that we become part of the leadership which the Aquarius destiny is calling, and we answer unto the victory of it--fateh. I’ll love to see how the show happens!