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Then you say, "Don’t be so stubborn. Follow me." This is exactly what Mahāprabhujī says here to the mind. The mind is depicted as a cow. Mahāprabhujī tells the mind, "When we are together, so come together with me. Toja ātmā bhedabatāba tehe." Bhedabatāba means the secret. Bhedabāta means the secret. "I want to reveal the secret of the ātmā to you." Thus, the guru says to the disciple, "Please follow me. I want to show you the ātmā, the secret of the ātmā." When you always go to the feet of the guru, that means you go to the satsaṅg. Dharma means doubts. Then, slowly, slowly, everything will become clear. Your doubts will be removed. But he also points out that this doesn’t happen immediately. He doesn’t just say, "Go to the satsaṅg." He says, "Jaya raho," which means keep going, always, constantly, again and again go to the satsaṅg. Then this will happen, and then I will show you where you can find the Ātmā. There is a pinzera, a cage, like the rib cage. This cage is made from the five elements, and that, of course, means our body. Hans is a swan. Both the swan and the crow symbolize the ātmā, the soul. The crow is black, so it symbolizes the jīvātmā, which is still connected, not pure, but with all the dirt of our kāmas. The swan is white, symbolizing the purity of the pure, enlightened ātmā. (When I said that in Australia, I got in trouble because there the swans are black. Maybe special karma.) So, there is a cage made out of these five elements, our body, and in that you find this Ātmā. It says here, "Oseme," like an exclamation mark: "Don’t search anywhere else, search it inside, within yourself." There you find it. And here he says, "Don’t go anywhere else, you have to look here." It’s like a warning: don’t look anywhere else, look here. Here you will find it. Then comes a quite strong statement, followed by a very powerful expression: "Mātā-pitā ora bandhu." We know these words more or less from the mantras; it means mother, father, brother, relatives, friends—all who are dear to us. Dunia is this world, or you can say the ocean of this world. In many bhajans, we always have the symbol of wanting to cross the ocean of the world. But here it is said that all these who are dear to us, dunyābitse dubābatahe, they drown you into this ocean of the world. So, I think now we have to stop a moment and think about what Mahāprabhujī really wants to tell us. Should we now suddenly abandon them all and walk away, saying, "You are guilty that I cannot cross the ocean of the world," and leave them behind? Do you think that Mahāprabhujī wanted to say that? Mahāprabhujī’s golden rules always emphasize respecting your mother and father. In a bhajan, he even says that in the morning, first of all, greet your parents. I think Mahāprabhujī simply knows how we usually feel and behave. We say, "Oh, I love my parents, I love my partner, I love my children." But what does this "I love" really mean? We say, "I love my family, I love my parents," but what does "I love them" mean? I think the point here is that our love is, in fact, no real love, but it’s mixed with selfishness, with expectations, with conditions. Mahāprabhujī wants us to see how our relationship really is. In this bhajan, Mahāprabhujī has chosen a certain style—I could call it an educational style—saying something which is provocative for us. Because, in fact, mostly what we call love is just attachment. The solution is that we have to purify our attachment from all selfishness and transform it into pure, divine, unconditional love. We have to purify our impure attachment and transform it into true love without conditions. It is up to us to purify all this love for people and turn it into pure, unconditional love. Kahlil Gibran, a great philosopher and poet, put it in these words: "Your children are not your children." Again, a kind of provocation. What? You want to take away my children? These are my children. But when we think, in reality, these are God’s children. And we got the blessing and the responsibility to serve them. When love is just this feeling, "I want to serve you," then there is no selfishness, and then there will be no problem. It is possible to transform our worldly relationships, which mostly are attachment, into pure, selfless relationships. And then they will not drown us in the ocean of the world. It is possible to purify our attachment and transform it into a true, unconditional love, which will no longer drag us back into the ocean of the world. So, the bhajans of Mahāprabhujī are real teaching; we should take them as something to meditate upon. They are a true teaching for us, and we should meditate on them. This theme continues in this style. "Kyon abhe ho kar thore bhajo." Hyo is the heart. It says, why now suddenly your heart becomes hard? Hard is what kator means. Everyone who was in India knows a katorī. That literally means a small, hard pot. Kator means "hard." You don’t know a katorī? The little bowl, which means something small, iron, hard. We also have them here, the katoris, and you are not even ashamed of that. So why does it happen that our heart becomes hard, and we are not ashamed of that? How does it happen that our heart is hardened, and we are not ashamed of it? There comes just a small Māyā. And you forget God. You forget your aim; you forget your spiritual path. You forget your way; you forget your spirituality. So now Mahāprabhujī tries to wake us. "Uthāna," wake up. "Chetana," awake. "I will show you the form of the divine consciousness, the form of the Ātmā." Remember, he said in the refrain, "Follow me, I will show you the secret of the Ātmā." But when we get lost in the māyā, then we are not even interested in that. It’s like the guru is standing there and waiting for the disciple to come; he wants to liberate him, and the disciple says, "Oh Gurujī, I have something much more interesting." So now it’s a question of self-inquiry meditation for each of us: what could be this tora māyā, this small māyā, which maybe could tempt me so that I lose my path? What is the small Māyā that can distract us from our path? Because Māyā is individual. Swāmījī says, māyā attacks you there where your personally weakest point is. Māyā is different for everyone, individual, and it will always find its weak spot. I always give an example. In the street, there stops a Cadillac, a big car. Out of the car comes a young woman, and in her hand she has a beautiful orchid. The people are stunned—oh, look—but one admires the car, one the woman, and one the orchid. So don’t blame the māyā outside; you have the māyā inside. It’s our individual māyā. Where is our weak point? Where is the point where suddenly I might forget God, forget my path? Where is the place, where is the moment when I can suddenly forget God, forget my spiritual path? You see, we have to meditate on that, on what Mahāprabhujī says. A simple translation of the bhajan will not do. We have to work on that. We have to do a self-examination meditation to find out what Mahāprabhujī thinks, what he refers to. So, a simple translation is not enough. We have to meditate on what Mahāprabhujī says. And now comes the most provocative statement in the bhajan. Literally translated, it means those yogīs who practice meditation. Vár means this side, pár means the other side. So that would translate as: they cannot come from this side to that side. They are not able to cross the ocean of the world. I’m so often asked to make a bhajan translation, to give a text. But I tell you now the simple translation: "Those yogīs who meditate cannot cross the ocean of the world." That’s the translation. So what does Mahāprabhujī want to tell us? That we should go home now? That there's no sense in meditating? We have to think about what he really wants to tell us. What do you think Mahāprabhujī wants to point out here when he says this in a very provocative way? You can think back on the refrain: "Oh mind, give up your stubbornness, follow me, I want to show you the secret of the Ātmā." What does he want to say? That’s the point. So many, especially in our time, think, "Oh, I just do my sādhanā, and through this I will get liberation. I don’t need a guru." So we have to translate it maybe like this: Those yogīs who think they could get liberation just through meditation are mistaken. Sādhanā is important, but sādhanā without the guidance and the blessing of the guru has no effect. I remember an example now: the life of Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogī. I really recommend reading his biography. For years, he tried to get initiation from his master, but for certain reasons, the master didn’t give it. Finally, the wife of the master got compassion and arranged, with some trick, that he got initiation from an advanced disciple. He then got initiation into very advanced meditation techniques. He went into retreat and meditated very strongly for months, but he didn’t achieve anything, no result. Then the one who had initiated him realized something was wrong. He inquired about the conditions because he was actually tricked into giving the initiation. He went to Milarepa and told him straight away, "With these techniques, if you had the blessing of the guru, you must be enlightened already now. If it’s not, something is wrong." He found out that, in fact, the blessing of the guru was not there. Because of that, the whole sādhanā was fruitless. He realized the guru did not have the blessing; he did not have it. And then he realized the whole thing was worthless. So we have the blessing of Swāmījī; we can be happy. Our sādhanā here really can be fruitful. Rūpa means that which has no form, the formless. The formless, the ātmā, is blissful inside your body. Why are you suffering so much? That means, if you have the blessing of the guru, then the sādhanā will be a joy. So it is obvious that Prabhupāda here in this bhajan addresses especially yogīs who think through their sādhanā they can achieve everything and they don’t actually need the guidance of a guru. In this bhajan, Mahāprabhujī speaks precisely to the yogīs who think that only through sādhanā they can achieve everything and that they don’t need a guru. It was Mahāprabhujī himself, because he was enlightened from childhood—we know it from his biography—but to give others an example, even he took a guru, his master Śrī Devpurījī. So he says, "Śrī Devpurījī, Gurū Pūrṇimā, I got the perfect enlightened master, Śrī Devpurījī. And he has given me Svāmī Dīp, he has given me the darśan, the darśan of the ātmā." So, let’s sing the darśan. Hath chhor manachal sangh mere, Toya ātmā bhed paṭāvat hai, Jaya raho dur ke charaṇom, Param sab dur karāvat hai. He is the one who makes the chains of love... Choramachal sangh mere kaiyatam dita, Tatpitaar bhai bhanma peechathe.