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Part 1: A Personal Journey into Spiritual Practice I will speak about my experience and the spiritual part as it is for me. It is not for everybody, but take what you will from it, and I hope it is helpful. I started with no intention of being where I am now. I went to India for three months simply because I always had a feeling to go, but I never knew why, how, or what I wanted to see. I just knew I wanted to go. So I went for a few months, got a little bit stuck, and I am still stuck—but for me, it is fantastic. What is important for me about yoga, or any spiritual practice—it does not need to be yoga; there are so many in the world—is a matter of dedication. It is a matter of giving yourself to one practice. I say this because before I went to Australia, I was given an Australian Yoga magazine in India by Tulsī. I felt a little seasick because there were so many things going on. It seemed to me that everybody was doing a little bit of everything and not a lot of anything. Whatever spiritual path you take, the nectar of it comes when you go deeply inside. This is true in daily life, in family life with children, with work—whatever it may be. The real joy, the real experience of anything, is going deep inside it and giving yourself completely to it. For me, that is yoga. For someone else, it may be another path, but it does not function to do both. We have concepts in our tradition of four types of yoga. One is called Karma Yoga, which is to do sevā, service to people. We have the traditional yoga everybody knows, which is Rāja Yoga, doing āsana and prāṇāyāma and so on. Then you have Jñāna Yoga, which is knowledge: to understand why we are here, how the world functions, and the concept of the energy of God. The fourth is Bhakti Yoga, which is devotion. It can be bhakti towards a guru, towards the concept of God, or towards some concept of the Absolute. The idea of bhakti is that you give yourself completely to it, that you just open your heart. In our bhajans—spiritual songs which in Rajasthan are basically the way all teaching is done—one says that the guru came and gave a rain of knowledge. It was a rain of knowledge everywhere. In our area, where we live, it is a desert; it rains very rarely. When the rain comes, everybody is out in the fields ploughing and opening up the earth so the water can go inside, because it comes so heavy and quick, and then it is gone. What you prepare for is what you can collect, and that is what is there for the whole year. It will not rain again. The rainy season in India is from July until the end of August or start of September. After that, the next rain will hopefully be in July. In spiritual life, it is the same. Just as we open the earth to collect that water, you open your heart and mind. Then, from whichever spiritual path we are following, it can enter inside us. You collect as much as you can. That openness is the key to letting go of any fixed concepts or preconceptions, and then just seeing and experiencing what is coming. That is bhakti, that is devotion. It is not easy to do, but it is very difficult to get that knowledge. For me, the spiritual path is not about being a monk or a renunciate, or living any particular type of life. It is about, within that life, being there in that moment and acting in that moment. I am a Muslim Yāsī, which means a renunciate. But when I look at really great, dedicated parents, I see their renunciation is actually more than mine. When you are a parent and your whole life is dedicated to your children, in that pure concept of being a parent, that is such a devotion, such a service. Your whole mind and heart is dedicated to them. Your life and work are devoted towards bringing up those children, giving them everything. That is also the same thing. The point is to do it. There is a certain period in India at the moment; they are stopping the 10th class examinations in the school curriculum because children are committing suicide due to the pressure. For me, that does not solve anything. The problem is not with the exams. The problem is with the family relation. If children cannot go home and tell their parents they have not managed to live up to expectations, and would rather take their life than say that, then something is wrong. I do not know how it is here, but there the problem comes because people work so much they never spend time with their children in those young years, from birth until 10 or 12. Afterwards, they get frustrated, wondering why they do not have a bond. If there was no bond in that time, it is very difficult to make up for it. The other thing about spiritual life is to start it. Everybody knows the concepts of yoga and other forms of spirituality. To get something out of it, one has to start living it. We start on the basic level, but the start must be there; the practice must be there. It does not mean sitting for three or four hours in meditation, but to start at your own level. For me, it is a great experiment of practicing, seeing the result, and seeing how it affects you. Then practicing again and seeing the next result. Slowly, you learn how to balance yourself when certain tensions are in your life, how to bring yourself back into calmness. You become capable of having those things in front of you, dealing with them, and then going to the next step. Slowly it develops, and suddenly you find you have this beautiful bank of things you can fall back on when you are sick, when somebody is angry with you, or when you are disturbed at work. It is like a musician who, with experience, can get the sound they want from four or five strings that they would normally get from six. That comes with experience and practice. On the yoga path, in the beginning it is beautiful to practice in a room on a mat in a class. That feeling is there and it feels so good. But then you go outside, something disturbs you, and it is just gone. With time, dedication, and the practice of what we call śaraṇa, one spiritual practice, then that stays and you have to deal with those things. It takes time. In the bhajans they say: "Uṭho mere bhāī, ab kī bārī hai." (Wake up, my brother, now it is your turn.) This is a bhajan of our Gurujī’s Gurujī, because today is his birthday. He is saying, "My brothers, my fellows who are around, wake up, because your chance is going." Hindu philosophy says it is very difficult to get this birth as a human. The opportunity of this birth is to get realization, to come to God. Therefore, he is saying we got the chance, so grab it, make something of it. Purify ourselves and extend ourselves spiritually. In our practice, we have bhakti towards our lineage, towards what we call paramparā, which goes from guru to his guru, to his guru. In the end, we have the concept of God being in everything. That is the final concept. In between, we devote ourselves to some object. The reason comes very much from village life. I do not know if you have seen in India, they are always carrying water on their heads in earthen pots. They can fit 20 liters of water inside. If you try to carry one, if it is empty it is easy. If it is full, it is easy. But if it is half full, it is impossible because the water moves from side to side and spills everywhere. Devotion is used in yoga because you are trying to take away your negative tendencies, habits which are harmful to you physically or negative towards others. That leaves an empty space. Rather than have that empty space, which can fill with anything, you fill it with devotion. That way, the balance remains, and slowly we aim to fill the whole pot. You take something out and put something else inside. Then you take more out and put something else inside, until it is no longer necessary to take anything out. In Buddhism, there is a similar teaching from the Buddha. As I understand, he was sitting in his jungle when a lady devotee came and asked him to explain the concept of bhakti and of satsaṅg, which is to be in good company, to come to spiritual programs. The Buddha said to her, "I will explain it to you tomorrow. You should bring me one complete bucket full of kheer" (which is sweet milk rice). She came the next day. She had put so much love and devotion into making this kheer all morning. If you make it properly, it takes a long time, boiling and boiling the rice. She poured it there, and he took his wooden bowl and said, "Pour it inside." She looked inside, and inside was fresh cow dung from that morning. She said, "No, I cannot pour it in there; it is dirty. Can I wash it?" He said, "No, just pour it inside. You want your answer? Put it in." Very reluctantly, she started to pour the kheer inside, and it became full. He said, "Look, I put the kheer inside. Why did you stop? I asked for the whole bucket." She said, "If I put any more, it will overflow and make a mess." He said, "I told you to put the kheer inside." So she continued to pour. It was flowing out of the bowl onto the floor. She felt sad because she had made it with such love, and now it was going to waste and making a mess. She poured half the bucket and stopped again. He said, "Please do not stop. You will get your answer. Keep pouring." She said, "No, I do not want the answer. I just do not want to make such a mess and waste this kheer." He said, "Keep pouring." She kept pouring. At the end, because the kheer kept going inside, all of the cow dung had started to fall out. What was left was one full bowl just of the milk crust of that kheer. Then he started to drink it. "Did you get your answer?" She got her answer. It is the same principle. We try to come always to spiritual programs, and we use our devotion to keep pouring inside. Those negative qualities which are inside will just go out more and more. We keep putting in that devotion, and slowly it purifies automatically. At the end, we are suddenly left with something we just cannot believe, something so beautiful inside, such a light inside. The job is done without even realizing it. That is what takes time. We are just continuously putting positive thoughts into our hearts and souls, and devotion, and doing good things for other people, and trying to gradually get rid of our negative tendencies. Purījī Prakāś, Purījī Prakāś... Purījī, Purījī... And I will call everyone to come. Then, after it finishes in the morning, the first thing will be eating. We had our eating first, but I do not think we would last anyhow till 5 o’clock. In the morning, he is eating, and then everyone goes home to sleep. But it is the most beautiful. You can hear it from where we are in the ashram. Sometimes in one night you can hear three or four going on: one in the village nearby, one in the back of the ashram. I do not know where, because there are only a few places where there is one house. "Mahāprabhujī Karatā, Mahāprabhujī Karatā..." Part 2: The Spiritual Harvest: An Explanation of Bhajans and Practice This portion is very much of the village. It uses symbolism from our agriculture, which everyone in our area can relate to. It says that which your teacher, your guru, has given to you—plant it. Put it into the ground and let it grow. First, it says to put away your anger and your lust for material things; put them far away from you and clean your inner impurities. It uses the image of preparing a field: before sowing, we first plough the land and let the rain come so all the weeds emerge. Then we plough it again and plant the crops. So, go through with a plough and uproot those things within you which you wish to rid yourself of—jealousy, hatred towards others, or whatever it may be. Then, plant in that ground the dharma: your duties, your responsibility towards society, and the things you should do as a human. Plant those human qualities you wish to have: to be loving, caring, compassionate, and all those things. Plant them in that place instead of the weeds which were there. The other seed you should plant is the seed Oṁ. So, Oṁ represents, first, the mantra which the Guru gives to the disciple in our language. And also, it is that seed of spirituality. Oṁ represents that whole spiritual energy, God, and Paramātmā, as we call it—that energy which is in everything, which pervades everything. Make it go green. Make those crops go green with compassion; fertilize it with compassion. And when it gets dry, when it starts to dry out, then give it water. That water should be of your spiritual practice. That’s the water you pour on it, and it will grow and grow. Then it says the crops have come up, and it is coming to the time for the harvest. In our area, we grow mainly wheat, dhal, and sesame. They are the three crops. At that time, when they’ve come up and start to dry, they have to be harvested. It’s time to collect it together and to take the fruits of that crop out. The next verse, which we call a śloka, is saying: "Vasubhānaya Mal Gahalaya Vechina Kovrasada Siddha." So, you took out all of the seeds and you brought them back to your house, which means into your heart. Then you assess the value of those things you have collected on that spiritual path. "And then Vāhāpāṛā Mola Amola Kapāyā." You found that you have something here that is beyond any price. It’s priceless, beyond anything you could have imagined. These bhajans are always written by somebody, and they’re referring to themselves inside. The saint who wrote these bhajans says that at that point, he really realized what it was all about. When he had it come within him, then he realized what the scriptures were saying and what it really is like, beyond anything he could have imagined. Then he refers to his Guru. He’s saying, "Prabhu Bīpā Keṭī Nīpā Jai," that my Guru prepared that field for me where I could put those crops inside. The person writing the bhajan is saying, "All my brothers, all my brothers, listen to what I’m saying. Listen, hear it, please hear it." He says, "Find the blessing of some real teacher who can take you on that path which I’ve just been on." Someone who can make you recognize and realize what’s really inside all of us. That’s the meaning of the bhajans. They’re so beautiful; they’re such treasures. That goes on all night, with different topics, different things. I don’t have anything else to say. That’s it. I’m not very good at speaking for a long time. But I just wish for everybody that you’ll find your path, whichever one it may be. In another one of the bhajans, it says, "Hey, hurry up, you’ve got your path." They’re describing it as a chariot, and the horses are the senses—our senses—which are pulling us here and there. Put a bit on them; control them with your discipline. Then hurry up and get on the road and go to the destination. Use this body and this... Śrī Śrī... Pull away the illusion; pull away the curtain. It’s not there. It’s in all of us. That light is just there, and we just have to pull the curtains back so that light can shine. We just have to let it shine. I’m going to do one meditation now. Or a bhajan? That bhajan, as you like. Meditation or bhajan? That’s right, you have one famous bhajan. It’s not mine; I just sing it a lot. I enjoy it, and then meditation. This bhajan is also from our lineage, and it’s one I particularly love because there’s such imagery there from the villages. I can just imagine it in our area and how it’s occurring. It’s about the culture of Rajasthan. When the guru, when the teacher comes to somebody’s house, it’s just this huge celebration. In the smallest village, you’ll suddenly find that there are hundreds of people there. Before he comes deep into the house, they’ll be there. I don’t know if anyone’s experienced this with the band, just making noise. You can’t hear much tune inside, but they’re banging on these plates and on drums and this and that. Ladies are dancing in front, and the men actually have a system. Of course, in the old tradition, the guru will come without his shoes toward the house. There are two groups of men, and they have long, long pieces of cloth, about fifteen feet long. They roll that out on the ground so that he won’t get his feet dirty. Then, as he comes to the end of the first piece of cloth, the second group has their cloth ready. As soon as he steps off that first cloth to the second cloth, the first one is collected up and run back up to the front and put down. That can go for kilometers. It’s just such a joy in the event for the people. Being in the house, there is decorating of the house, preparing a little place to sit, preparing for eating, and lots of sweets and so on. In this bhajan, it’s talking about all of that. At the same time, it’s talking about how that also happens inside. By our practice, we prepare the welcome. By doing prāṇāyāma, which you all, I presume, are practicing in your classes, by doing prāṇāyāma we are cleaning the house, preparing the house for when he comes in. They put flowers, and they even have, in the old, old days—which it refers to in this bhajan—there was no plaster or paint as we have now, and they used to use lime on the walls. They had a system of preparing the place where he would sit or she would sit, and it was with lime. They would just keep polishing it and polishing it and polishing it for days until it would become, it would shine like pearl. They refer to that as Mokṣya Cok, the place which is like a pearl, shining like a pearl. Spiritually, that is that you just keep repeating the same practice over and over and over until your practice shines like a pearl, until you’re purified inside. Then the sweet, in Vajra, actually Ramya refers to sweets when you’re eating. There’s not much vegetables, there’s not any salad, there’s purīs which are like bread, but nothing else. That sweetness is the qualities which we should develop, the same things again: compassion, love, caring for others. Then, when they’re serving the eating, again, someone is standing there beside. In that time, there was no electricity, so there were no fans. Someone was standing behind the side with a small fan, which they just go around like this, and it rotates. It was to keep away the flies and also to keep the person cool. That again refers to just meditation and breathing, and constantly being in the air and keeping the purity. So that’s the story of the bhajan. At the end of the bhajan, again, the person writing it is saying, "Please come from every village and come and find your spiritual master. Find your path and start with it." This is one of the most beautiful lines in here, which I forgot to translate. The refrain actually says what I heard from my guru, Suhalānā. It’s such a hard word to translate; it just felt so beautiful to me inside. I would sort of translate Suhalana as those things which are beautiful to you, like memories from childhood. The other line in there, which is so beautiful, is "Sturtha Hansa, Sturtha Jagai." He awakened in me the sleeping swan. There’s a concept in the Hindu tradition that everyone has that potential to be the realized person. We’re like a swan that’s sleeping and just floating around on this, what we call māyā, in this world that is here. Just when we get that knowledge, then the swan lifts its head, wakes up, and that awareness comes. Beautiful, beautiful images here inside. Thank you for listening, and come to India. You know, just now we said, "parārakṣā," which means, "Please come, please come,... please come." Anytime, if you’re in India, then come and visit us. Stay for one day, stay for one month, but be careful if you stay for fourteen years. Everybody is welcome. I have heard from some people they say that they are spiritual but not religious. Is there any difference between religion and spirituality? How can you differentiate? You know, it just depends on your path. If you are a religious person, then you should be spiritual. It may not be the case. If one is just stuck in some dogma but is not living that, then I would say you are not spiritual. But then again, if you’re really living any religion, I mean, all the religions have one objective, I would say. They may have different clothes, and they may have different roots, and everything like that. But it’s to become one with that God in the end, and to realize things within yourself, and to be happy. And that’s spirituality. It depends on the person and how they’re practicing. You can be doing yoga and not be spiritual if you’re not doing it, if you’re not there, you know. And you can be not doing any of those types of practices, but you can be a very spiritual person. I mean, people who are just serving society and so on, it’s such a spiritual thing. To be selfless is to be just giving to other people. There is also a yoga, I mean, in Karma Yoga, the yoga of service. The borders are not there for me. It’s just a matter of keeping going. I find sports people very spiritual, but they may not realize it, you know. They don’t think of it as spirituality. But when you think of somebody, like the really top athletes, in one way, their consciousness, their awareness is just so completely in that one moment. That concentration is so high; if they ever turned around and did some other, like, spiritual practice, in one way, their preparation is incredible for that. In India, everybody talks about cricket and only about cricket, and then they only talk about Sachin Tendulkar. I read an interview with him. This year he’s been playing for 20 years at the international level, which is something quite incredible. They were saying, "What have you, you know, what’s the difference between you then and now in the way that you play?" And he said, you know, in 20 years I’ve learned one thing, that the only important thing about playing good cricket is my breathing. If I’m breathing slowly and steadily, my body and my mind are balanced, I’m calm, and I’m in the moment. And when I’m in the moment, then I can play. I mean, he’s a yogī, when you look at it from one way. That’s incredible practice. And if those people turn in a different direction, then it’s very special. The other thing he said was, there’s only been a few times in my career where I felt that I batted well. And I said, "What happened?" And he said, "From the beginning of the day until the end of the day, the only thing that was in my consciousness and which I experienced was the ball." You know, I didn’t see the bowler, I didn’t hear the crowd, I didn’t see the fieldsmen who were around, I just saw the ball. And he said it only happened to him three or four times in his whole career, but that’s a very special form of meditation. So, I don’t think you can say this person is spiritual and this person is not spiritual. It’s a matter of degrees, and it’s also a matter of development. In that Buddha’s concept of yin and yang, even in the darkest part there is still a white dot, you know, in everybody something good is there, even if they are the most negative person, something is there; it’s a matter of developing it. Thank you. Thank you for giving us so much, and we would all like to give you something, but we have nothing to give except our own practice. Good, just do the practice please.