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We have every possibility in us

A satsang discourse on spiritual strength and inner potential, framed by a Hanuman Jayanti celebration.

"Everybody, everything is here. But that āvaraṇa, that curtain of ignorance which hides the reality within ourselves... it keeps it from us, perhaps until we are responsible enough to be aware of it."

"The approach of our sādhanā is to fill ourselves with good things... Slowly, slowly, you find that purification occurs without you actually being aware of it."

He expands this into a teaching on spiritual practice (sādhanā), advocating for filling oneself with positive practices like mantra and bhajan to naturally crowd out negativity, and discusses the concept of true health (svāsthya) as being established in the self.

Filming locations: Jhadan, Rajasthan, India.

Sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ, sarve santu nirāmayāḥ, sarve bhadrāṇi paśyantu, mā kaścid duḥkha bhāgbhavet, oṁ śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ bhavantu. Boleshri Dev Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jai, Deva Puruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jai, Hindu Dharma Samrāṭ Satguru Swāmī Madhavānandjī Bhagavān Kī Jai, Viśva Guru Mahāmaṇḍala Svaparaṁpara Śrī Swāmī Mahāswāmī Pūjya Guru Deva Kī Jai. Guru Deva Darśan Nadan Nahu, Guru Deva Darśan Nadan Nahu. Chaitanya Hananadana ho, Chaitanya Hananadana ho. Vajarashanadana ho, Vajarashanadana ho. Sheshamaheshakare Guru Seva, Sheshamaheshakare Guru Seva. Mujako ho sharana rakho gurudeva. Prabhu tanna manna dana hara panaho. Gurudeva dara shanna danna ho. Gurujī Darśan Adhanahu, Caitanya Ananadhanahu, Caitanya Ananadhanahu, Darśan Adhanahu, Darśan Adhanahu. Ṛṣi-muni-sumare avatāra, vēdatta ke nāhi pavatta, pāḍa nehi, kisi gaharu kathā na ho. Guru-deva darśana na dānā ho, Caitanya Nandana ho, Caitanya Nandana ho. Japa tapa yoga nahī̃ banāve, japa tapa yoga nahī̃ banāve. Kāḍūna nididhyāsana karāvāve, kāḍūna nididhyāsana karāvā. Satguru darśanātiratasāra. Jojana pavihivangyasitara, jōjānā pāvihivāṅgya-sītāra, ārī-bhāvavān janavāṅgāvanahū, ārī-bhāvavān janavāṅgāvanahū... Sattva-bhāvakā-bhāvakā, Pramu Mujhapasana ho, Pramu Mujhapara ho, Prasana ho, Prachana dana ho, Prachana dana ho, Apsri Deva Purisa, Satguru Sai Apsri Deva Purisa. Dada Maheta Avatāra Darśa, Dada Maheta Avatāra Darśa Śrī Svāmī Dīpa Prakāśānandah Śrī Svāmī Dīpa Prakāśānandah Gurudeva Darśanānandah Gurudeva Darśanānandah Darśanānandah. There is a śloka that begins the Kena Upaniṣad. Its meaning is essentially: may all my senses have strength and health. May my eyes, my ears, my mind, and my body also have strength, so that I may use that strength to understand Brahman, to comprehend reality, to move towards God. To use it for that purpose, and then to use it further. Today is Maṅgalvār, Hanumānjī’s day. Here in Jhadan, it is also Hanuman Purojī’s birthday; he is from Croatia, from Rijeka. So it is a double Hanuman day. Hanumanjī is here at the moment, with Swamiji. Swamiji will not be here for the webcast. A doctor has just come from Jodhpur to examine Mataji, a specialist. Swamiji stayed there to be present during the examination. He asked me to convey his many blessings to everyone and said that if the doctor were not there, he would be here giving the webcast himself. But because the doctor has come from so far, he must be there at this time. There is a story about Hanumānjī that attracts me very much. It is from when he was a small boy, known as Māruti. He was a rather active, perhaps you could say naughty boy, often getting into mischief. One day, he was very hungry. He looked at the sun and thought it was a fruit—beautiful and orange, much like this microphone, which is almost in my mouth today. So he jumped up into the sky—he had some rather unusual attributes and strengths—grabbed the sun, and started to eat it. Of course, the gods were somewhat disturbed by this. It was a little against the norm. Immediately, they came to try and stop him. Some of the lesser gods came, and they failed. He kept eating. Eventually, Indra came riding on his elephant, which was beautiful, big, and white. He came to stop Hanumanjī. Hanumanjī saw the elephant and thought it also looked like a fruit, so he grabbed it and started as if he was going to bite it. At that point, Indra had to take action. First, he tried to tell Hanumanjī—to tell Māruti, as he was known then—"Don’t do it. Stop, stop, stop." But he wasn’t listening; he was hungry. Eventually, Indra had to strike him down with his thunderbolt, his Vajra. Māruti fell heavily from the sky back to earth. At that time, he injured his jaw, which is when he actually came to have the name Hanuman, as the translation of Hanuman is to have a big or swollen jaw. From that time on, he had that feature. As you can imagine, Hanumanjī’s father was not very happy that his little boy, who was a child at this time, had been beaten up by one of the gods. His father was the wind, Vāyu, the wind god. In protest, he stopped. Now, if the air and the oxygen stop moving in the world, everything stops. So there was more trouble, and all the gods were disturbed. As with any good disturbance, there had to be mediation. A meeting was held, and a compromise was reached. Indra agreed to apologize, and he also granted Hanuman some siddhis, some boons of extra strength and different powers. However, it was also decided that he was not quite responsible enough to handle those powers yet, considering what he had just done—eating the sun and trying to eat Indra’s vehicle. So those powers were hidden from him until he would meet his god. They would be within him, but he would not be aware of them, so he would not be able to use them. If you know the story of the Rāmāyaṇa, eventually Hanumān came to meet Rāma. Up until that time, he was not aware of those siddhis which had been granted by Indra and the other gods. But after meeting Rāma, he became aware of them and then proceeded to perform all the wonders he did during the Rāmāyaṇa. It is a beautiful story. But what it means for me, why it touches me so much, is this: everybody, everything is here. But that āvaraṇa, that curtain of ignorance which hides the reality within ourselves, which hides the beauty within us, which hides the God within us—it keeps it from us, perhaps until we are responsible enough to be aware of it. Until we come to that point where we meet God. We meet those qualities of God that we are capable of having within us. It is in everyone, every single one of us. And when the time comes, we will become aware of it. We have to acknowledge the possibility that it is there before it can be revealed to us. We have to be able to say, "Yes, I believe that I am also that." We must accept ourselves. In Hindi, the word for health is svāsthya. If you take the Sanskrit elements of the word, sva is the self, and stha is to be still or to be established. So it means to be established in yourself. That is svāsthya. That is good health. When you think about how many illnesses arise from psychosomatic effects—I know from my personal experience in my sādhanā, things that have happened that I realized were simply because of my mind, restrictions in my body, inflexibility and illnesses—they came because that relation to the self was not there. I think also, when you look at yoga, its intention always attempts to establish that, to establish you within yourself, both physically and mentally. The same with Āyurveda. When you consider the difference between Āyurveda and Western, allopathic medicine, for me, one fights disease. It is a war against disease. The other tries to promote health. There are two ways to approach an illness. One is to try and defeat the illness itself, to fight the symptoms, to kill the bacteria or whatever it is. The other method is to make your body full of health, so that the disease will simply have to leave. One is more sustainable than the other. You can continuously fight a war; it will go on and on, but it is tough and constantly abuses the body in a way. But Āyurveda, by promoting health, by preventing illness from occurring, and by giving you that svāsthya—establishing you in yourself and establishing that health within yourself—it is a much more sustainable and sāttvic way of dealing with illness. It is the same when you are dealing with vṛttis and disturbances in your sādhanā, disturbances in your mind. One method is to try and stop them. But you can run around and try to stop them as much as you like, yet more keep coming up. The other is to fill yourself with other thoughts, to fill yourself with positive thoughts: bhajan, prayer, mantra, satsaṅg. If you have a water bottle, when it is empty you can crush it easily with your hands, but when it is full you cannot crush it. If you have a drum, as we have here in Jhara—we have big blue drums for water everywhere that hold about 200 liters—you can beat it as much as you like; if it is full of water, very little will occur inside. It will just make a very dull sound because it is full. But when it is empty, it will make a huge noise. So for me, the approach of our sādhanā is to fill ourselves with good things. Let our faults be there, and let us slowly just shove them out. By practicing our mantra, our āsana, our prāṇāyāma, our purification techniques, the bhajan—all of those things which have been given to us. The more you practice, the more the warmth and joy of them pulls you further into that practice. Slowly, slowly, you find that purification occurs without you actually being aware of it, and that something has happened. One day you look back and say, "Well, something happened. I got somewhere, at least. At least some progress was there." When you see the way you react differently in a situation than you would have before, when you see that the way you treat somebody is different than it would have been before when they come to you with a certain approach, when you see the way you react to a large amount of pressure or work or tension coming upon you and find that it is different from before—those are the signs that something is happening. We do not need to have wonderful lights and people jumping up in the air and floating and levitating. We just need progress to keep going towards our goal, and to have titikṣā, to be steadfast in that, to keep going day after day. There is a word in the Upaniṣad: "bhūtiṁ mumūrṣāhu"—constantly. Constantly keep practicing this. Keep practicing it over and over and over again. So what if it takes some time? We have been spending lives on it. Let us just at least keep going. So Hanumānjī did not know all of those siddhis were there, but they were. They were always there. They were just kept hidden from him. Then one day he met with him, he had Rāma’s darśana. And just because of that darśan, that curtain was gone. All of those things which were already there inside him were revealed to him—the abilities which he had. Then he was able to perform that seva which he was asked for by Rāma. So that is the story for me. That is Maṅgalvār, Guru Hanumānjī’s day. Enjoy, and just be aware of what special things, what wonderful things are inside every one of us, and the fact that we are sitting next to some people who contain some very, very special things.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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