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Svām Karoti Kalyāṇam Ārogyam Dhana Sampatti Śatru Vinaśāya Dīpam Jyotir Namastute. Dīpam Jyoti Parabrahma Dīpam Sarve Mohanam Dīpanam Sajjāte Sarvam Sandhyā Dīpam Sarva Satyam Om Śāntiḥ, Śāntiḥ, Śāntiḥ. Śrī Dīpna Rambhagvānā Kījā, Śrī Śrīdhava Īśvara Mahādeva Kījā, Śrī Marav Kṛṣṇa Bhagavānā Kījā, Viśva Guru Mamaleśvara Paramānanda Svāmī Ānanda Purī Jī Mahārāja Kījā. Suffering is humanity's most enjoyable toy. Why is it most enjoyable? Because it seems that with suffering, you gain a kind of baggage tour. Suffering brings you somewhere—you still don't know where—but we like it so much that we entertain it all the time. Looking around, wherever we go, looking in the faces of people, there are two signs that reflect the human state of mind and his satisfaction in this world: one is the forehead, and one is the mouth. When you look around, just observe how many people have the corners of their mouth up and how many have it down. Does it say something to us? We are happy when somebody is smiling. Actually, it happens automatically; it goes up. But then when the human relaxes again, his muscles become relaxed, and we are there where we are standing. Suffering is great. It's a great tool in our life, although everybody says, "No, we don't want it; it's not good, it's painful." But if you look towards your own life, your own achievements on emotional, spiritual, social levels, consider how much pain you had to go through to achieve something. You go through the same situations, the same experiences all the time, again and again, with the same results, until we say to ourselves, "It's enough. I don't want to go through the same experience anymore because I know the outcome." Slowly, we grow wiser with every experience until we become a wise person. A wise person is one who doesn't need to make the same experiences in life anymore because he already knows the outcome, the result. He knows when he puts an action, what will be the reaction. He knows the karmic consequences. If we know when we act what the reaction is, we start to think twice. And we start to realize that both go together: there is no action without reaction, and there is no reaction without action. So, on the long, long way towards human evolution, we accumulate quite a big heap of suffering and pain. And it's not only the physical pain; it's mainly the mental pain that gives us trouble. But it's also a great teacher. It teaches us not to avoid it, because you can't avoid pain in general. It is more to look towards how we deal with the pain, how we can accept the pain, and how we can utilize it for our own advantage. Imagine your life is settled, comfortable, content, with no big problems—neither money problems, no relationship problems, no social problems—a little bit of spirituality here and there. Fine, good. But does it bring you further? You will feel comfortable, but what pushes you only comes when you reach a certain point in your life, a kind of realization. Most of us reach it through suffering or through painful experiences, where wisdom starts to blossom. Then we really start to think: how can we proceed on a path without creating too much pain to ourselves and others? We are all living in this world, and this world is a world of the mind. It's created by our mind, by our own mind, and by our collective mind. There are different philosophical ways, different spiritual traditions. But in general, we believe that this world is not only a world consisting of things that we can touch, that we can approach with our senses, but behind that, maybe, is something more. Now, all that we can approach with our senses is connected with time and space, although scientists tell us since quite a long time that even time and space is an illusion. Different spiritual schools know this since many thousand years. Time and space—we move with this body within time and space, and we call it māyā, illusion. Yes, easy to say. Give me a hammer, try it on your head—how does it feel? Illusion? Great. This illusion, or this māyā, what we call it, is everything we can measure. We can measure it. Even the universe we can measure, so the universe falls also under this category. Take a tape, you can measure everything here with a tape. Take a weight, you can measure everything. So that which we can measure, a measurement, is Māyā. And what is beyond that? Maybe also Māyā—a different type of Māyā. Who knows? Only those know who reach there, who were there and who came back and tried to tell us with their own words and with our words about this other existence. They say, "Yes, it's there," because they experienced it. It's not something that they experienced only by chance, but they experienced it with a certain deep knowledge, with a certainty, without any doubt. But if somebody gives me a hammer and I kick my own head, I fall unconscious. Afterwards, I'm not quite sure: was it real or not real? But if you start to make some inner experiences of different worlds, a kind of certainty comes, which is much more vivid, much more alive than what we've experienced here. Who can remember with us what happened yesterday? It's gone. Somehow flickering in our memory, but not much; it's gone. Two days ago, one month ago, ten years ago—we have it in our memory, and the aliveness of this memory depends mainly on our feelings. And the more alive they are, the stronger the feelings, and mainly the feelings of pain, of sorrow, of hardship, keep us alive. Unfortunately, many of us are already so used to that pain that we have to increase it more and more to become alive or to feel ourselves. Look around the last five to ten years: so many new types of sports, adventures, and activities came up. And all, they're a little bit crazy, you know. They're all going in that direction to increase your output of adrenaline—the push, the kick. That's it. But you can't increase this over time. There is a certain limit because the body has its limit; the nervous system has its limit. Because these things come from outside. But there is another type of kick, which once you experience, you don't want to miss it anymore. And that kick comes from looking inside through meditation. It also goes through the nervous system. But at that point, you start to trust your nervous system because you slowly prepare yourself through certain practices, through certain guidance, for this kick—let's call it a kick; it sounds good. And then when you start to go on the inner journey, suddenly you realize there is much more than what we see, what we hear, what we smell. There is much more that our mind can provide, our intellect. New worlds will open. But this comes when one gets tired of this world, when one gets tired of the experiences, and when a certain longing starts to develop—a longing for something that doesn't change, what is more permanent, what is more real, what is not that five-minute kick and then you want it again. It needs a longing. We have so many longings also in this life, here and there, this and that. If you look around, how strong is the longing of a lover to the beloved one? How strong can this be? It can be crazy, irrational. But it is the same longing, which can be transformed in another direction. There is a beautiful story about that from Tulsīdās, who wrote the Rāmāyaṇa. Tulsīdās was already famous as a Sanskrit teacher, as a learned person, and he was happily married, and he was very fond of his wife. He was so fond of his wife that he couldn't stand to be separated from her. But one day it happened: his wife decided to visit her father some distant way, and when Tulsīdās came back to the house, she wasn't there anymore. "Oh, she's gone," so he inquired and found out she went to her father. Now, darkness was already falling. It was cold, it was rainy. But you know, love can be so blind and mad. He didn't care for that. He ran out of the house, heavy rain, walking here and there through the forest. Suddenly, he came to a river. Oh, he had to cross the river. He had to cross the river. How can he cross rivers? He started to jump inside, and he swam and he swam, and he got a little bit exhausted. And suddenly, he saw some kind of something swimming here, so he got caught on that, and it was slowly drifting him to the other shore. He was so focused on his aim that he didn't realize that it was a corpse, half-burned. No problem. Reaching the other shore, he went on and on, and finally he reached the house. It was in the night. He looked up; there was light on the veranda, but everything was closed. How to get up? There was a kind of creeper, so he started to climb up, and after the other, so focused he was that he didn't realize that it was a big snake hanging there. But no problem. Finally, he reached the door. The door opened, and there was his beloved wife. He was standing there with his snake in one hand, you know. She looked a little bit surprised. "What's going on? What's going on? That's it?" But then she told him, "You look so mad, so crazy. Why? If you would just invest a small part of that longing, what you have for me, towards God, where would you be now?" This really kicked him. He got a kick, and the story goes that shortly afterwards, he left his family and went on a Parikramā around India for fourteen years, then came back, wrote the Rāmāyaṇa, became famous, and even is remembered nowadays as a great scholar and a very learned person. But it took that push. The longing was the same; it was just directed in a different corner. This longing can bring us very far, and it can bring us to certain areas that we can't even imagine exist. And there is a beautiful bhajan written by Mahāprabhujī: "Guruvarame Jalun Saunadesh." Here Mahāprabhujī talks about a country which cannot be so easily approached, but once you are there, you don't want to come back because everything is there; everything is contained in there. Antaryāmī me jahaluṣā unāre, Lokālajāśabdacakhikalapaṇā, ... Dhārakīvirāganave, Dhārakīvirāganave, Uvāra me jahaluṣau nāre, Antaryāmī me jahaluṣau nāre. Oni voreshame janama mamarana, Karma kalankana ishe, Jīvaṇamukta-parāpatāmako, Jīvaṇamukta-parāpatāmako, Brahma-ānanda-hame, Brahma-ānanda-hame, Jalu-shau-nare, Jalu-shau-nare, Loka-laja-sabdhacha-kekalapana, Loka-lāja-śabdacha-kekalapana, Dhāra ke vairāga nāve, Dhāra ke vairāga nāve, Dhāra me jāluṣa unāre, Antaryāmī me jāluṣa unāre, O nīvo deṣa me akhaṇḍa ujālā, Janda surāja nāhiṣe, o nīvo deṣame akhaṇḍa ujālā chandasurajanahise raṅgana-rūpa-anupanari raṅgana-rūpa-upanari Nahi bonche raṅka nare, Nahi bonche raṅka nare, Śubhara mein jahalusha unare, Taryami mein jahalusha unare, Loka-lāja-śabdhāca ke kālāpānā, loka-lāja-śabdhāca ke kālāpānā dhāra ke vairāganāve, dhāra ke vairāganāve jāluṣauṇṭaryāmi me jāluṣauṇāre agamāreṣame santa-vīrāje bāraṃ mā bārāre. Agam-māreṣame santabhīrāje pāram-mabhārāre. Onivodhiṣame āmi ājaratahe. Satguru Indraśure, Satguru Indraśure, Ame jālu ṣauṇa, Antaryāmī me jālu ṣauṇa re, Dīpakahe baḍai śamana bhāve, Tira nai jāna madare, Ahe baḍaye śamanna bhāvahe, Phira nahī janma dharāhe, Sadara sinhāsa naya pappī rājāhe, Sadara sinhāsa naya pappī rājāhe, Ae Sabu Begammare, Ae Sabu Begammare. Taryāmī me jālu śauna re, Lokālāja saba dācā kī kalpanā, ... Dharakī virāganave, Dharakī virāganave. This is a very strange bhajan because you cannot categorize it. It's not a jñāna bhajan; it's not a bhakti bhajan, but it contains some very, very specific points on our journey. It translates, "Let me go with you to the highest world." This world has no attachments inside. It means it's free from time and space. It cannot stick anywhere; it's complete detachment. And Vairāgya is the means to reach this world. It means if you take Vairāgya, if you renounce—actually you have to have para-Vairāgya—then you will be there immediately. It is necessary to have renunciation to reach something, to achieve something. Without that, we always get stuck in that spider web of attachments. It's very sticky, like a chewing gum you try to put somewhere, and still, it's there. It doesn't leave you so easily. In that world, there is neither birth nor death, so you don't die there and you're not reborn. It's just you exist. And if you reach that point, you're a Jīvan Muktā, a liberated one. Maybe you live in this world, but at the same time, you live in the other world, and you will enjoy and experience the highest bliss, whatever it may be. We have a vague idea about the highest bliss, this Ānanda, Saccidānanda. If you would know, we would be ashamed of so many other enjoyments, ice creams, what we are running after. There is an incredible light shining, and there is no sun, no moon. There is also no form and no color. And neither a king nor a beggar can reach it. Doesn't matter what you are in this life—Mr. So-and-so, I am this, I am that, I am a professor, I am a king, I am a beggar. You can't go there; you can't reach this place without grace, what we call Guru Kṛpā. That's the key. You can try as much as you want; you can come up to the door and knock there. Maybe somebody will open and just try to look inside, but it doesn't mean that you will get inside. In this world, there are living the great saints, the great Siddhas, the perfected ones, those who achieved perfection on this planet. Āgama Deśame Santabhīrāje Baramā Bara Ādeś. This is the world of the saints and the great Siddhas, and we are greeting them. Univo Deśame Amiya Jarātahe Satakur Indra Śureś. And there is a nectar of wisdom that is flowing all the time, the nectar of wisdom. It's endless. We can get a kind of substitute ourselves from this nectar which starts to drop from the Bindu. If you practice enough in Keśava Mudrā, in 10, 15, or 20 years, you will get a taste from that. Mahāprabhujī says this level, this world, my mind likes very much. Actually, he expresses something that is not expressible. What is beyond form and name? He has to find some kind of words in this world to express it, so he says, "It's very near to my mind, sitting there in this āsana, on this seat. There is no suffering, no fear anymore. All is done, all is finished, all suffering is ended, all fear." If you look closer to yourself, whatever feelings you have, if you dig deep enough, you will come to one feeling, and that is fear. When you conquer the fear, it's done. But fear is that kind of god that maybe also protects something, protects you from looking at something you can't manage. But once you face it and overcome it, it's done; it's purified. And in that world Mahāprabhujī is talking about, there is no fear. And we see all the great saints and Siddhas, they were and they are fearless. Nothing can move them, nothing can destroy them, nothing can distract them, because fear governs the world, and it is the root of our suffering. So this is a beautiful bhajan in which Mahāprabhujī tries to explain a little bit, or to tell us about the world he was living in 24 hours. And in that world, he would not like to get out anymore. So we started from the suffering, and we came to the bliss. Suffering is the motor, the fuel towards the bliss.