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The Adi Shakti Mantra and the Meaning of
Sadhana
A contemporary prophet once said, “Oh, the
times they are a-changing”. And along with
those changes come stress—at work, at home,
in our communities, and even the
environment. We’ve been blessed to have a
Teacher that gave us a way through these
challenging times—sadhana. Sadhana
cultivates steadiness and vitality in the
face of change. Sadhana allows us to know
the unknown and to face the present moment
with security and stability. So our task in
the morning—you may think of it as your
chore—is sadhana, self-discipline. “Oh! I
have to discipline myself.” It sounds so
forced, doesn’t it? And yet with sadhana, we
have an opportunity to remove a lot of stuff
from our subconscious. It can be quite
joyful; and that’s why I called it sweet
fulfillment.
If you’re one who considers sadhana a chore,
how do you begin to hold it in a different
way? How can we change our relationship to
sadhana so that it becomes a delight? How
can we cultivate a self-discipline that is
both sweet and fulfilling? I like to think
of sadhana as a beautiful dance, Shiva
Nataraj, Shiva dancing; sadhana is the
entire universe dancing around you and
you’re simply trying to get into rhythm.
Part of the rhythm is simply showing up. I
think you should show up even if you don’t
know why. It’s a good idea to be regular in
your sadhana, even if you’re irregular as a
person.
Sadhana isn’t only a discipline; it is this
universal dance—a dance with certain steps.
In every single sadhana, you want to
complete those steps. You want to
internalize them, because if you don’t, you
never get into rhythm. You’re always heading
in the wrong direction. Sadhana is a dance
between the body, the mind, the soul and the
universe; sadhana is the discipline to know
when to lead and when to follow. So much has
changed and yet there is a common element
that remains—the Adi Shakti Mantra or
Morning Call. Let’s think about this dance,
this thing we do in sadhana, from the basis
of the very first one—because that never
changed. It acts like a thread weaving
together all the changes over the years: Ek
Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru.
What does it mean? Wake up! Awaken—it is the
kundalini awakening mantra. And each
syllable within the phrase can be thought of
as a gesture—a step in the dance. First we
say Ek; it means ‘one’. If you vibrate with
the word, then you become instantly open to
everything at once. If you are truly one
with the gesture, you will experience no
boundary—all barriers will drop away. As
soon as you say Ek, you’re totally open;
you’re one; you haven’t divided anything
yet; you’re without thought. Does that make
sense? There are other experiences available
from this same word—for example, you could
feel strong by chanting a long Ek, drawing
it out; or, you could say to yourself, “I’ve
really had it with all this stuff” and the
sound becomes more like ‘Ick’. Your
subconscious is funny. There are many
potential experiences, but as a sadhana, Ek
consolidates total openness in an instant,
poof, all at once.
The next word is Ong, the sound of the gong,
which always expresses a sense of expansion.
So first, we experience total openness, Ek,
there’s no distinction; and then Ong, the
universe taking birth; me giving birth to
me. Does that make sense? First—Ek—I’m me
without any prejudice, without any judgment,
without any fragmentation; then Ong, the
creative energy to express my destiny.
Ek Ong Kar: You’ve expanded and now you
project out, because Kar means all those
thoughts and actions in the creation. So
think of it—Ek Ong, the universe has created
the field of action; Kar, so you act. Ek Ong
Kar—what a joyous state to start with! So
we’re already in pretty sweet fulfillment
and we’re only through the first third.
What’s the next word? Sat. What’s the energy
of Sat? The expression of Sat? The word Sat
means existence—what is—because what’s true
is what is; what is, is what’s true. There
is no gap. Sat is your being in existence,
that sense of coming into your being,
crystallization of the self. And the Self is
unlimited.
Nam is an interesting one. We translate it
noun, identification, identity. All of
existence gains an identity. What’s the
gesture of identity? What’s the dance of
identity? What do you do when you have an
identity? What does that mean? There are
things I can do and there are things I can’t
do as Gurucharan—right? If I’m a human, if
that’s my identity, there are certain things
I can do and not do as a human, correct.
Identity has a bantar* and jantar; it has
structure. So identity requires a
confrontation, a qualification.
Many people enjoy Sat, that great vast
being: I’m being; I’m one with existence.
But then Nam comes along and—oops, identity
crisis. Because Nam demands that you qualify
yourself: Does this thought or action
qualify as Nam in this moment? It requires
discipline and surrender and courage. Yogi
Bhajan asked again and again—can you
qualify? So Nam is the poke, provoke,
confront, and elevate. It’s not that we poke
each other or confront each other, but
rather our Self—in our sadhana! Nam is your
greatest gift. Sometimes we get lost, we
hook into self-existence, Sat, as the
essence, the ‘real thing’. Yogiji would say,
So what? Everything has existence. You can’t
get out of it. So that’s not so interesting.
But Nam, now that’s interesting, because
every identity, every word we speak, creates
identity and shapes our total effect in the
world and our experience of ourselves.
So the fundamental gesture in sadhana is
confronting the thought. If you go through
your entire sadhana and never confront the
thought, did you really do sadhana? I don’t
think so. This took me a long time to learn,
because I would sit down and all I wanted to
do was just bliss out. Nothing wrong with
that is there? So I’d chant Ek Ong, bliss
out, and say, I could go on for 20 hours—the
more bliss the better. But in the end,
there’s a kind of bliss that should come
from your being, your mastery of your Self.
So during sadhana, Nam is not just
generating a good feeling or going to a
positive place or entrancing yourself in a
certain thought because it feels good and
you don’t want to deal with your other
stuff; that’s not it. Sat--you’re in your
being; Nam—this is me, my identity. So be
it, be it so. Sadhana must have this aspect
to it, this gesture. Otherwise you’ve gotten
vast, you’ve projected, but you’ve forgotten
Nam and your sadhana is incomplete.
What’s the next word, Siri. What’s it feel
like? What happens to the mind? Siri brings
you to shuniya, a moment of stillness. It
means great; it means beyond; it means you
went past whatever you had been feeling,
thinking, living. Suddenly you’re a hero;
you’ve gone beyond the ordinary. And if
someone sees a heroic act, they say Wah!
You’ve stilled your former, small self and
for a moment, you’ve become zero. So Siri is
a stillness, a focused shuniya, because
without that you can’t manifest Wahe.
Without that moment of shuniya, you’re just
hoping. Wahe becomes a question not a
reality, not the true merger, the vastness,
the surrender, the experience that is Wahe
Guru.
And what’s the final word? Guru. Guru is
transformation. You have all that you’ve
gone through, you’ve cleaned out the closets
of the mind, you’ve gone to the temple,
you’ve presented the being, you’ve totally
opened, you’ve expanded, you’ve merged,
you’ve bowed; now the instruction comes.
Guru is the teacher; guru shows you the way.
So, what are you going to correct? How are
you going to do it? That’s when you’re given
an experience, an insight, a transformation.
When we practice sadhana as a life-long
discipline, it frees up so much energy, so
much vitality and grounds us in such a
vastness of reality that we can take on
anything, anytime, anywhere. It gives us
flexibility and resourcefulness, caliber and
character. It gives us courage. Think about
it, you can live drawing energy from any
chakra. And when you’re young, you don’t
have to worry. Everything is
working—hormones are balanced, cells are
regenerating, there’s lots of energy from
the first three chakras. Then you get into
middle age; things are still pretty good.
You’ve been working out, doing okay, no
problem. Except—if you’re still drawing on
the same source of energy as when you were
young, you’re going to eventually fall
apart. You have to tap into that energy of
compassion and connection, clarity in your
projection, or you start messing up. It’s a
different energy, different bodies, make
sense? You have to have emotional
relationships that make sense. You have to
have a lifestyle that supports your
identity. You get a little older and you
have to start drawing energy from your
subtlety, from your spirit.
In the old days, to be an elder meant
possessing a special force. It was a time of
enormous vitality. Baba Deep Singh, at the
age of 80, took up a great sword and went to
war. The story goes like this: the enemy
cuts off his head and he just grabs it and
keeps going, walking toward the Golden
Temple! Freaks everybody out! As he
approaches the temple, he throws his own
head through the gates and onto the prakarma.
And the enemy says to itself, “I’m not
dealing with this guy!” and retreats. So
what is that? Oh, he’s weak and old. No! You
can be; but you can also switch to a source
of energy that goes along with this stage of
life, this subtlety, this enormous power.
When you find that source of vitality that
is your consciousness itself, that’s called
living, that’s called sadhana. Sadhana gives
you a link—through all the chakras—to that
core energy that is you.
Until then, it’s not actually an experience.
It’s imagination, fantasy, emotional
satisfaction. It’s called all sorts of
wonderful things. It’s what drives Country
Music. So we’re describing this simple way
of being. Take up the mantra and in the
vastness of our group psyche (that’s why we
do group sadhana)—somebody’s sad, somebody’s
mad, somebody’s glad, somebody’s bad—you can
always accept somebody else’s problems more
than yours. So their stuff slips in, your
stuff slips over there, the whole thing gets
exchanged, and sure enough this Nam thing
starts happening, and you get catalyzed, you
become you. Otherwise, you can locate
yourself in a nice safe corner where you can
say, I did sadhana. But ask yourself: Is
sadhana doing you? You have to do the dance.
That’s where you get your sweet fulfillment
and delight. To enter into that play and
allow the confrontation, the expansion and
the energy of sadhana to transform you. It’s
going to be fantastic!
[Bantar and Jantar are two stages in the
sequence of creative expression from inner
essence to full manifestation: antar, bantar,
jantar, mantar, tantar, patantar, and
sotantar. Bantar is associated with
structure in time and space, when the
thought begins to have dimension. Jantar are
the qualities associated with the form.]
Click Here to Download the PDF version of
the
The Adi Shakti Mantra & the Meaning of
Sadhana.
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We
launch our first “Institute Course” this
summer is called “Healing the Wounds of
Love”. We are doing this in the spirit of
Yogi Bhajan who first held institute courses
at KRI in the early 1970’s. In those
beginning days, the courses were for serious
students and teachers who wanted to delve
deeper into an aspect of themselves,
consciousness and life. The first few were
by invitation only to insure that
participants were committed to practice the
sometimes challenging techniques he shared
and practice them with an esprit de corps
forged from the honesty, earnestness and
collaboration of the group effort. These
experiences were invaluable to give us a
sense of our own reality, potential and
character. They gave us tools to deal with
life and to approach life with powerful
confidence, courage, openness and humility.
Inhale
through the nose in ten equal strokes
