Yogi Bhajan Lecture: Self Healing

Excerpts from a lecture given on 7/20/85

Each one of you who is sitting here is created by God. And there is no way to feel bad about it, because God couldn't do a better job than what you are. If He could, He would.


There are three things in your life. One is mental anxiety, one is physical fear, and third is that you are neurotically egomaniacs as far as food is concerned. You eat for social reasons and you socialize with food. You know, “Let's talk. Which restaurant in Santa Fe?” You have a list.

But if you ask how to eliminate it, you all go silent. If a food eaten—no matter how good it is—cannot be eliminated out of your body within twenty four hours, you are subject to be sick, period.

I am a very good cook but when I cook, I cook a medicine. I want to be healed. Sometimes I am tired. I go and I cook something, and I know I can go for eight hours straight. But whatever I cook and whatever I eat, I know one thing: the next day it should not be in my body. The energy you waste keeping that food in you is much greater than the energy you use for all your life.

I don't eat my food and do my prayer to look good. And I don't thank God because He provided me with that food. I thank Him because He is with me at that moment. And I invite Him to that dish. You know what my prayers are? “Thank you God, let us eat together.” There is a sacredness about life. You have to expand your life beyond your dimensions.



Tonight when you go home and go to sleep, try to remember who you are and what your name is. You don't. That one forgetful moment in life when you are totally part of the cosmos and the cosmos is part of you is the only Divinity time where you are real, you are pure and you are fundamentally alive. The rest you are uptight, hassling, hustling, lying, convincing, talking, making rules, breaking rules. God knows what you do, you do a lot of stuff.

Life is very simple, folks. The first eighteen years of your life you eat what you want and you digest it. Go ahead! Don't worry, don't even read the menu. Any roughness in your life creates a reaction in your glandular system and the glands are the guardians of your health and your happiness. The problem is not how rough you are. The problem is, can you meditate and clean yourself out. One who doesn't take a bath after ten or fifteen days stinks, and one who doesn't meditate after fifteen or twenty days goes berserk.

Being Holy

It's the biggest lie you accept that you are going to find God. Ten trillion cells in this body leave within seventy-two hours and replace themselves. Is it not God? You have been told the biggest lie on this planet: find God. The moment we say we are going to find God, we have already subconsciously, consciously and unconsciously accepted we have lost God. That's the biggest human joke which has been played with mankind. And you have been told that you have to be extra good. But what do you mean by extra good? I always give this example:

If a Hindu takes beef he goes to hell. If a Moslem takes pork he goes to hell. A Christian eats both and he goes to heaven. Who is holy? And who can decide who is who?

My definition is that as long as you have nine holes, you are holy. And as long as you have nine holes and you can decide what comes out of these holes and what goes into these holes, you are very, very holy. That is all it is about.

This body is under so much stress of digesting garbage; this mind is under so much stress dealing with commotional garbage; and this soul is so sick dealing with denying God—the source of the soul and the spirit—all the time. It doesn't make any sense. Religious people do not accept each other. I don't know what kind of religion that is. We have all come from one God. We are all creations of one God. We are all children of one thing—that ultimate energy.

You call it God, you call it light, you call it health. The only thing that will help you is calling on your own life force. It doesn't matter who serves you what. If you don't want that food and you tell yourself that food is not needed, don't eat it. In your system there is a master system and that master system is you alone.

Nobody is not a non-healer. God has provided an entire healing system within you. You heal yourself. Herbs heal, God cures and doctors diagnose. Sometimes we do not know what is wrong with us and we need to go to somebody who is an expert in the field and ask him. But it's always our option whether we want to believe it or not.

One thing you have to believe, "As you sow, so shall you reap."


If you want to sum up the 3HO teachings, there is nothing more than that. These two sentences which I have spoken totally sum up the entire teachings.

It's very fascinating to see God in everybody. And if you really want to see God, see Him in your enemy. That's real. That is the fun. Don't feel overdone when somebody praises you. And don't go under when somebody insults you. Because it is God which is insulting, it is God which is appreciating. Because when you go to a movie you don't run into the curtain and tear it apart. You sit on the chair and watch what's going on. And that is the most healing thing in life. The most healing thing in your life is to watch what is going on. Be a good audience and I can bet with you everything is going to be all right.

I definitely believe that the purpose of life is to enjoy life, and I am very sure that happiness is our birthright. You ask how.

"As you sow so shall you reap.” Please don't sow what you don't want to reap.

And how you can be that intelligent?


©The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan

This lecture can be found on The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®