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Our first satsang again today. You cannot say we don’t have enough satsaṅg here. Let’s maybe start with the end today, with what we usually always squeeze in at the end: birthdays. I received information that we have two round birthdays today. Lakṣmī from Strylka—where is she? Her aunt is ill, which I think is what Swāmījī spoke about, so she has gone. Unfortunately, she is not here, but we still wish her all the best for her 50th birthday. A round number. And Gertrude from Vienna, is she here? All the best. It is a special occasion that you can be here today. Swamiji is blessing, so you can look at whichever one you like. They are very different. Okay, and now come here. So quickly, we don’t leave you. Also round, but we don’t say. This is a circle number, but we don’t reveal it. Is there anyone else who has a birthday today? Is there anyone else who has a day off? No? Good. We had on the schedule to finish the lecture from the morning. Many were not there in the morning, and also those on the webcast might not know, so I will first give a short summary so we know where we are. I need the harmonium, please. We planned to continue the pre-daily lecture, the bhajan interpretation. But since there weren’t many who were here pre-daily, and the webcast may have been cancelled, we will briefly summarize the topic. Sādhvī Pārvatī is currently giving lectures about the Vedas, which is like the scientific background of Hinduism, and also of yoga, of course. One question which comes to our mind, especially when someone gets a yoga name like Gaṇeśa Purī or Śiva Purī or Kṛṣṇa Purī, is: what do all these Hindu gods actually mean for us as yogīs, as Swāmījī’s disciples? We are discussing this using the example of Gaṇeśa, the elephant-headed god. Usually, in the beginning of every satsaṅg, every ceremony, every marriage, first Gaṇeśa is invoked. He is seen as the remover of obstacles. When you ask in India why this is so, the normal answer will be stories, mostly from the Purāṇas—the spiritual teaching in a popular form. These are the big story books in India. Many Indians choose Gaṇeśa as their iṣṭadevatā, their chosen god. They direct all their love and worship to Gaṇeśa. For them, it is the chosen channel to God. As I said in the morning, Hinduism is the most tolerant religion in the whole world. You can choose whatever you want; it can even be Jesus, Buddha, or whatever. In Swāmījī’s teaching, we find that in the strict sense, our bhajans are actually not Hindu bhajans. Mahāprabhujī’s teaching, Swāmijī’s teaching—this divine wisdom—is beyond all religious boundaries. Mahāprabhujī, as you know from Līlā Amṛt, was respected by Hindus, by Muslims, and by basically all religious people as someone beyond the religions. When they had a quarrel, they came to him to hear his opinion. But most of the bhajans are actually addressing Hindus, picking up their beliefs, and then turning them in a certain way to explain the essence of the teaching. Here we come to the step that we don’t just listen to these stories and repeat them, but try to understand what is actually the essential teaching. It forces us to think about the point in them. To understand this essential teaching, you need a master, a guru. He is the one who explains to us this essence, and that exactly happens in the bhajans. Many bhajans pick up, for example, the idea that you can go on pilgrimage, go to the Kumbha Melā, go to the temple, worship the gods, and then comes always a "but." But all that is not enough. Through this, you will not get liberation. As we had yesterday in the bhajan, also addressing yogīs: you can do strict sādhanā, tapasyā, fasting, and also that is not enough. You need the guidance, the blessing of the guru. To understand these scriptures rightly, you need someone who removes the obstacles, and that again is the guru. So we come to the point that when we looked in the morning at the bhajan "Padaromere Ganapati," a Gaṇeśa bhajan, we saw it is dedicated to the Guru. For me, my Guru Dev is the Gaṇeśa. He is the remover of obstacles. As mentioned in the bhajan, we still turn to our Guru to ask him to protect us from obstacles. In fact, when you look deeper, all the different aspects of the divine you find in the guru. You know that Holy Gurujī, Swamijī’s master, was in the beginning a great devotee of Lord Kṛṣṇa. Therefore, we call him also Mādhava Kṛṣṇa. He loved the bhajans of Mahāprabhujī, which were Kṛṣṇa bhajans. But the funny thing is, his guru was Śrī Devapurījī, who was seen as a Śiva incarnation. The Kṛṣṇa bhajans written by Mahāprabhujī were actually dedicated to Śrī Devapurījī. You shouldn’t be confused about that. It is not that someone is this or that. When you look deeper, you come to the point that the guru, in the end, is Viṣṇu, is Śiva, is Brahmā, is Lakṣmī, is everything. You find it all in one. Holy Gurujī wrote one wonderful bhajan in which he speaks about how he saw all the different aspects of God in his guru. It is a bhajan, "Khyāpucho," which is a deeper dhyāna. The refrain asks, "How was the merciful Mahāprabhujī?" To say the truth, he was like that. And then he compares Mahāprabhujī with many aspects of God and many historical saints. First, with Lord Brahmā: like Brahmā, he was a proclaimer of the divine Vedas. Like Viṣṇu, he was a sustainer of the universe. Like Śiva, he was a great yogī and avadhūt—someone who from birth is not attached to anything worldly—and he destroyed the negative forces. To make it short, I may go a little quicker. He was like Lord Rāma, seen as Puruṣottama, the highest personification of God. Like Lord Kṛṣṇa, he was perfect in all the arts, which refers to Mahāprabhujī spontaneously answering questions through bhajans and performing many incomparable līlās, divine games. Like Harish Chandra, he was a great benefactor. He was a Jīvan Mukta, a liberated one while alive, like King Janaka. Like Lord Buddha and Mahāvīr, the founder of Jainism, he was a great protector of the Ahiṃsā principle. They couldn’t hurt anyone because they saw their own form in everyone; they had realized the oneness. Like Muni Śukadeva, he was a Bāl Brahmacārī, a brahmacārī from childhood on, and a perfect personification of wisdom. He had great power, like Hanuman, who carried a whole mountain. Like Gaṇeśa, he bestowed ṛiddhis and siddhis. Like the child Dhruva, he had unshakable bhakti, and his kingdom extended through all the worlds. Like Śaṅkarācārya, he was a proclaimer of the Vedānta philosophy and conquered troublemaking sects. Like Lord Indra, he showered the rain of divine nectar, Amṛt. Like Chandra, the moon god, his presence gave happiness and peace. The merciful Mahāprabhujī was the Lord of the Lord, the Supreme Lord. His divine light shone brighter than that of millions of suns. In the last verse, Holy Gurujī makes a summary. He says, "In him I saw formless, different, countless different aspects." I cannot think of anything that would not be in him. In fact, that is the feeling of a devotee towards the guru. Whatever we need, whatever we search for, we find it in our Guru. So, let’s sing that bhajan. Sathya kahu esa parama kripāla, sathya kahu esa parama kripāla. Khyāpucha khesa dīpa dayāla, khyāpucha khesa dīpa dayāla. Brahma samāna vidānta bhakta, brahma samāna vidānta vāta. Viṣṇu samāna kare pratipāla, kya pucho khen sadibha dayāla, kya pucho. Khen sadibh dayāla, Satyaka hū esam paramah krepāla, Satyaka hū esam paramah krepāla, Kyā pucho khen sadibh dayāla, Kyā pucho khen sadibh dayāla. Śiva Saman Mahāyogī Avadhūta Śiva Saman Mahāyogī Avadhūta Abhaguṇṭhasuranku Saharanvala Abhaguṇṭhahuranku Saharanvala Kya pūcā kesatī padeyala Maryāda Puruṣottama Śrī Rāma jesā Śrīla Vānta Prabhupāramadayāla Śrīla Vānta Prabhupāramadayāla Kāpu cakṣati buddhayāla, Kāpu cakṣati buddhayāla. Satya kaha esa parama krepala, Utsake satipa dayala. Śrī Kṛṣṇa sam saptalame puran, Anupam līlā karata krepala. Anupam līlā, karata kripāla, Kuchke satipat jayaala, Kuchke satipat jayaala. Harishchandra Sammah Dhanita, Harishchandra Sammah Dhanita, Jeevan muddh janaka sambhishala, Jeevan muddh janaka sambhishala, Kya puchkhe sathiyaya, Puchkhe sathiyaya, Gudh mahabhir sam ahim sathipala, Gudh mahabhir sam ahim sathipala, Apan roop sap me dekhna paala, Apan roop sap me dekhna paala, Kya puch khes diya, puch khes diya kudyala? Satya kaho aesa, parama kripala. Bhal Brahmachari Muni Sukh Dev Samman, Sathya Gyan Ka Murati Bala, Mahabaladari Hanuman Jaisa. Gaṇeśa Saman Hṛdī Siddhi Mālā... This bhajan brings it really to the point that whatever we search for in God, whatever we ask from God, we find it in our Gurudev and through our Gurudev. So when we come back to Gaṇeśa, our example, we can say we found so far two approaches to Gaṇeśa. The first is that you might choose Gaṇeśa as your Iṣṭadeva, the God to whom you pray and surrender. The second one, which we find now very much represented in all our bhajans, is to see the guru as the Gaṇeśa. He is, in fact, the remover of obstacles. He is the one who is able to explain to us the essence of these divine teachings, also in the Purāṇas. More importantly, he is the one who guides us practically on what to do, what our sādhanā is. Our sādhanā is yoga. How is this connected with all that? Swamiji once also spoke about this point of Gaṇeśa. The Sanskrit language is a very scientific language. We have just to look at the word. Gaṇeśa, Gaṇapati, Gaṇarāj—you have the word "Gaṇ." Gaṇ means something like the minor gods, or other aspects of the Divine, not the well-known aspects of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Śiva, but other aspects like Vāyu (the wind god), Varuṇa (the water god), or Bhūmī (mother earth). Basically, it is to see every aspect of the divine creation as divine. This you find especially in the Ṛg Veda. So you can say the gaṇas are the different aspects of creation; these are actually the tattvas, the elements of creation. The word "Gaṇ" means the different aspects of creation. Īśvara means the Lord. So Gaṇeśa means actually the Lord, the controller of these gaṇas, these elements of creation. Gaṇapati and Gaṇarāj mean exactly the same: the king of the guṇas. What has all that to do with yoga? Think about what Swamījī always says: what is yoga? Wherever there is a problem, trouble, there is some imbalance—in our body, in our mind, in society, in the universe. Yoga is that balancing principle. As Swamiji keeps saying, there is one principle that balances the whole universe, and that principle is yoga. So now, Gaṇeśa means the one who controls these elements, who is able to balance and harmonize them. Swamījī teaches us yoga to learn how to balance. Do you understand where we are going? Through Swamiji’s teaching, he teaches us how to become ourselves the Gaṇeśa. Where there is an obstacle, there is a disbalance, a disharmony. What Gaṇeśa does is remove the imbalance and bring harmony; then the obstacles are removed. Exactly that, Swamiji teaches us in a very practical way: through āsana, prāṇāyāma, through all the yoga techniques, to bring the balance in us and around us. As we said before, the Guru is for us the Gaṇeśa. In the end, the guru tries to transform us into him, that we also become Gaṇeśa. So this is Svāmījī’s practical teaching. Was it understandable? I think now we understand where Svāmījī is, where we are, and what we have to do with all this, Gaṇeśa and so on. How do we place Gaṇeśa? Is there any question about that? No? Good. For time reasons, I would say let us do the prayer now. Because we are starting the satsaṅg now, obviously, we have to tighten everything a little bit. It should be a little dark now, so we don’t finish everything so late in the evening. Yes, let’s start.