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This program is under the auspices of Om Śrī Alakh Purī Jī, Siddha Pīṭha Paramparā. About Alakh Purījī and the Siddha Pīṭh Paramparā, you may already know, or you will come to know now. It means you too are a follower or member of Alakh Purījī Siddha Pīṭh Paramparā, Viśokānandajī Siddha Pīṭh Paramparā. We have two days together: tomorrow and the day after. I will speak a little more about this. The subject of the last two weeks has been prāṇa. Very practical instructions were shared regarding certain health problems. Of course, we all have something we are not entirely satisfied with—some issue with health. And if you have no problem with your health, that in itself is a kind of problem. The practical instructions were given by our dear sister Harriet Bucher, Hemletā from Vienna, Austria. Over these two days, we will try to bring this chapter on prāṇa to a close, and I expect some will make a book out of it. There is a great deal to be said about prāṇa. A seminar or workshop like this—what people in different countries call a retreat—is highly significant. The space and environment, known as deśa and kāla, matter greatly for our spiritual development. Deśa means the place, and kāla means the situation, the time. Yoga is not something you practice for just three days or one year and then consider yourself finished. It is lifelong. In our life, yoga is like a horizon: the closer you come, the farther it recedes. Yet in the end, you are already there, so there is nowhere to go. It is present right where you are. So this is a lifelong path. One approach is health. Many of us came because of health. In Āyurveda, the first mantra, the very first saying, is that Āyurveda is the mother of medicine. No matter what kind of medicine, its origin—what in German is called Ursprung—is Āyurveda, represented by God Dhanvantari. Even more was revealed in the Vedas about nature and its healing power. The instruction of the Vedas is this: you should live in harmony with nature. Veda simply means knowledge, and knowledge exists where there is harmony. Therefore, out of this knowledge comes Veda. There are many different branches of Vedic wisdom, but out of them emerged four Vedas: Yajur Veda, Sāma Veda, Atharva Veda, and so on. Then came Āyurveda. “Āyur” means life, age. What is your āyu? It means “How old are you?” So Āyurveda is the science, the wisdom, the knowledge about age—which, simply put, means health. The father of medicine is Dhanvantari or Vedavyāsa. Much research has been done over time in various fields—naturopathy, homeopathy, allopathy, and many others. Yet the first true happiness is a healthy body. Pehlā sukha nirogī kāyā. The first happiness is a healthy body. Niroga means healthy, without illness, and the first happiness is true well-being. Kāyā is the body. You have a beautiful name in Slovakian—Kaya, is it not? Yes. Kāyā and Māyā. Now, the word sukha is really untranslatable, because “happiness” carries a different shade of meaning. There is no exact word in English, or in German, a language I know, that fully captures sukha. Sukhī Jīvan. You might say comfortable, happy, relaxed, no worries—many things—but not that precise word. We speak of two terms: sukha and duḥkha. Sukha is happiness (though I must use that word, inadequate as it is), and duḥkha means painful—all troubles, all unpleasant or negative things. So these two stand opposite each other. We have three kinds of desires. You know much about this through your children. Then there is the desire for position; that too is a big problem. If you have no position, you are unhappy. If you have a position and must retire, again you are unhappy. Then there is money: if you have no money, you are unhappy; and if you have money, you are also unhappy. It is very difficult to manage. Similarly with duḥkha. Therefore it is said, “This saṃsāra hai duḥkha kī nagarī”—this world is a city of duḥkha, of suffering. Holy Guruji, our Gurudev Swami Mādhavānandajī, used to say that each and every being, day and night, is searching: Sukhī Prakṛti, Sukhī Prakṛti... All of nature seeks well-being. Āyurveda gives knowledge about life, health, body, mind, and more. The ṛṣis were always searching for titles, for words, for names, very precisely. They looked for names that were utterly unique, and Sanskrit lends itself to such uniqueness. Thus, those vast literatures are called Vedas—the first written scriptures for humankind, the first literature. They bear only one name without any added title: Veda. In this single word, the entire universe can be held—like filling Gagar with Sagar. Gagar is a small pot; Sagar is the ocean. You fill the whole ocean into that one pot. That great saint, whether you call him ṛṣi or yogī, holds the entire endless universe, with its countless stars and suns, in a single word: Veda. Or in a single word: God—not Mr. God, Professor God, Doctor Doctor God, Diploma Engineer God—just the Only One, God, who needs nothing else. Similarly, we have to reach that point, to obtain that one knowledge, and that knowledge, again, is the Veda. It is called Ātmā Jñāna, the knowledge of the Self, Self-realization. And that is a lifelong journey. Some came first for health. The father of psychology, Maharṣi Patañjali—when you read his literature, he lived before Christ—you will see that everything was mapped out by those ṛṣis. Mind, consciousness, emotion, all of it, is beautifully distinguished in yoga, in Hinduism, or in Vedic dharma. Today you see in medicine so many names, so many illnesses, each very precisely declared and explained. Then, the next dimension that yoga opens is philosophical knowledge. During the Vedic era, so much was written in India that we would need five hundred or a thousand lifetimes to read it all—so much knowledge is contained there. If we were to learn that language and walk into a library, we would be like a little frog from a small pond. Once there was a little frog in a garden pond. People went away on holiday, and a child took that frog along in a bottle of water. The frog was so unhappy: “My world is beautiful and the greatest; there is nothing more.” Then the child released him into the ocean. He dived and dived, came up, dived again, and gasped, “Where is the end?” Our modern education, all that we think we know, is like that frog in a small water pot. Philosophical knowledge flourished in many other cultures too. Greek philosophy is the mother of European philosophy. Then come the spiritual seekers. They follow the health program, they listen to and engage with philosophical teachings, and both awaken motivation and interest within them. Eventually they arrive at spirituality. And in spirituality, however much you realize, it is still too little. Therefore, do not measure the days, months, or years of your practice. It is all too little. So we pray. Through the blessing of Gurū Deva, we will reach Self-Realization. The ṛṣis’ research, which they called tapasyā, is exactly what we would call research work today. When the sages contemplated the different yugas and came to Kali Yuga, they saw that human beings would lose their abilities, their principles, their discipline, and consequently life would become short. So they searched for a better way, a shorter way—a bypass. When all else has failed, the doctor says, “Now only one option remains: bypass.” In Kali Yuga, they created a bypass, and that bypass is called Bhakti Yoga. And within Bhakti Yoga, it is said, “Guru kṛpā he kevalam”—the mercy of the Guru Dev is the ultimate means. If you miss the Guru Vakya, if you fail to follow the Guru’s word, then again you will suffer. The Guru says, “Don’t do this or that,” and if you do it anyway, a great problem arises. There is a beautiful story. The Guru Dev said, “Don’t do this,” and I will not tell the whole story now. A master and his disciple were traveling through a forest. Their niyama, their saṅkalpa, was that wherever they found themselves at sunset, they would stop and stay overnight; they would not travel further. Once, they entered a village just at sunset. The master said to the disciple, “Okay, we stay here tonight.” They had walked all day, and the disciple was very tired—tired every day. The master gave the disciple two paisa, like two small coins, and said, “Go, buy food.” So the disciple went into the village and saw a big, lovely ice cream. He asked, “What does this ice cream cost?” The vendor said, “One pesa.” Then he asked about food for Gurujī. The vendor said, “One pesa.” The disciple exclaimed, “Good, done! Please, for one paisa give me the nice ice cream, and for one paisa give me this piece of bread—no butter, no cheese, nothing.” He returned to the master. The master asked, “Was the shopping good?” “Yes, today was good shopping.” “What did you buy?” “For you, this one bread. And for me, this ice cream.” The master said, “Well, ice cream must cost more than this piece of bread.” “No, no, Master. In this village, no matter what you buy, everything costs the same. Even if you buy gold or silver—gold and silver, the same price.” The master said, “I am sorry; God will forgive us, but we have to break our discipline.” “What do you mean, Master? Let’s go. We will not stay here tonight.” The disciple protested, “Master, I am tired! And you always taught that we must follow our discipline, never break our saṅkalpa. And now you, as the master, are breaking it.” The master replied, “Sometimes this is called dharma saṅkaṭ—a conflict of duties. These are the situations that arise, so let’s go.” The disciple pleaded, “Master, I am so tired, and I want to eat my ice cream. It will melt.” So the master said, “All right, you stay. I am going. Tomorrow you will find me somewhere on this road.” The disciple was overjoyed. “Thank God. Master is going alone. I can sleep longer today.” As the master walked a few steps away, he turned back and said, “One thing you should follow, and do not fail.” “Yes, Master, what is it?” “If anyone asks you, ‘Is this yours?’ never say yes. Even your body—it belongs to the master.” “That is not difficult.” The master left, and the disciple ate his ice cream and went to sleep, snoring. At one o’clock in the night, a criminal, a thief, came. He placed his own shoes there and stole the shoes belonging to… (the disciple). The thief then went to the palace, murdered the prince, and took all the jewelry. He returned to where the disciple was sleeping, put down the stolen shoes, took the disciple’s shoes, and vanished. In the morning, the king and everyone discovered the tragedy and were overcome with grief. The king wanted to know who had done this. The guards traced the footsteps and came upon the sleeping disciple. They woke him. “Master? There is no master. Are these your shoes?” “Yes, my shoes.” “Come with us.” They took him away. What happened next? The story I will tell you another time. So if you do not obey, you land in such troubles. That is the point. So the king gave the order: life sentence. They placed a black bag over the disciple’s head and prepared to hang him. They asked, “Do you have any last wish?” “Yes. Just to see my master.” “You have a master?” “Yes.” They went to the king. “Sir, this is his last wish.” “No problem. Where is his master? Bring him.” So they brought the master. The master looked at him and said, “I told you, never say ‘Yes, it’s mine.’” Where was Gurudev then? He protected him through his knowledge. And in the end, they discovered that the disciple was not guilty. But trouble had come, and it could have been avoided. Therefore, sometimes out of our weakness, if we do not follow Guruvākya, we suffer pain birth after birth—for many, many lives you will suffer. There is a bhajan of Holī Gurujī about this, you know. It speaks of Bhakti Yoga. Tulsī Dās Jī ne kahā: Kali Yuga Keval Nām Ādhāra, Sumir Sumir Nar Hoi Bhava Pāra. In Kali Yuga, we have only the shelter of the Name of God, the mantra. Practice, practice, and you will cross the ocean of ignorance. Many of you regularly visit our YouTube channel, Swamiji.tv. You love to listen to many bhajans, and the most listened‑to bhajan comes from one particular person. That person is with us today—our dear Nārāyaṇī from Koper, Slovenia. Stand up, girl. Now she has a new cassette, “The Whisper of the Soul,” which includes bhajans of Gurujī and Mahāprabhujī. Already over one million people have visited our YouTube channel and heard these recordings. Today Nārāyaṇī is here and will sing the bhajan Tuma Jāgore. Nārāyaṇī, the floor is yours: Devī Svarmā, Devakī, Dharm Samrāṭ, Satguru. Swamiji, Madhavānandajī, Bhagavān, Nekī, Sanātana, Dharma kī… So the whole satsaṅg was, in a way, a little introduction for Nārāyaṇī. The cameraman focused on her, but when I said “Narāyaṇī,” she wasn’t shown on screen. That’s all right; sorry about that. Śrī Pūjya Bhagavān Dīpan Nārāyaṇ. Śrī Pūjya Bhagavān Dīpan Nārāyaṇ. Thank you. Now it is getting late. You are tired. Tomorrow’s program will be as scheduled. I wish you a good night, sweet sleep, and honey dreams. The webcast will run the whole day tomorrow: asanas, pranayamas, lectures, and a little bit of eating as well. So now we will have a short prayer. We have a five-minute interval. If anyone needs to leave, you may. If anyone wants to go to sleep, you may. Hari Om.