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Śrī Dīpanī Rañjanā Śabaduka Bañjanā Prabhu Dīpanī Rañjanā Śabaduka Bañjanā Prabhu dīyā nī rabaduka bañjanā mā jāve mākhe kuva jāva Prabhujī abaduka bhaṅga bhaṅga namita jā bhaṅga bhaṅga sampati pavāya sampati pavāya dhyāna śana pavāya śana pavāya bhaṅga Prabhujī abaduka bhaṅga namita jā bhaṅga namita jā bhaṅga sampati pavāya. Sampati pavaya dhyāna śhana pavaya śhana pavaya bhaṅga Prabhujī abaduka bhaṅga namita jā bhaṅga namita jā... bhaṅga. Śrī Mādhavānandajī Gurudeva Kī Jai Śrī Madhavānandajī Gurudeva Kī Jaya, Śrī Dīpa Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya. Śrī Śrīdeva Īśvara Mādhava Kī Jai. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon. Within this webcast, it is very difficult to know what one should say and what one should not say. For some, it’s good morning; for some, it’s good evening; for some, it’s good night; for some, it’s a good sleep. It’s a great medium, the internet. It’s a great achievement for humanity—an achievement in the sense that humans always want to progress, to perfect themselves, to go beyond their own limits. When we look back over the last 100, 150, or 200 years, what humanity has achieved is a great thing. But still, the achievements are mainly connected with the outer world, with the gross material world, as we would say. With the Internet, we have the possibility to communicate with other people who are in different places, but at the same time, we have access to a huge storage of knowledge, of data, and we have access to all types of information—beneficial ones, good ones, or maybe not so beneficial. But basically, what it shows is the drive for humans to go beyond their borders, to get more, and to know more about themselves, even if it is reflected outside. Those who know a little bit about yoga know also about the siddhis, that is, supernatural powers. Some believe in it, some don’t, but it doesn’t matter. For those who have experienced it, they are reality. And these siddhis are connected with other realms of our existence. Let’s say you travel astrally with your astral body from one place to another, to hear from a long distance, to see what happens in other places in the world. These are abilities that naturally come with the individual development of the consciousness in the spiritual sense, and people intuitively know about that and try to translate these abilities within the material level. Let’s say the telephone: you can talk with somebody who is in America now on the telephone. Aeroplane: you can put your body inside and move it from one place to another. And with the Internet, we can even see what’s going on at other places at the same time we are staying here. Rishis and yogīs have done this since ancient times. Man tries to translate these abilities into his own world, and this is the world of the mind, of the individual mind and the collective mind. Each of us, we can say, has a mind in a different way. Some in a strong way—we say a strong mind, a healthy mind, a loose mind, a cracked mind, and so on. And we also classify it with a pure mind or an impure mind, a great mind, a genius mind. All our actions in this world, all our achievements—be it simple ones or ingenious ones, great achievements in life—they are all based on the mind. But if we think a little bit about the mind, what it actually is, it’s very difficult to classify. Mind in Sanskrit terms means manas. There are many, many schools—philosophical schools, schools of psychology—and they all interpret the mind in different ways. For a long time, I was thinking about how to understand the mind by explaining to somebody what the mind could be. It is very difficult, but it is easy when we look at our own mind and try to find certain attributes, certain qualities of the mind. We say the mind is restless, it is tense, it is peaceful, it is joyful, but still it doesn’t give a real picture of the mind. We know that the mind’s quality is activity. It’s a kind of big field, a playground, where our activities are going on, connected with our intellect, our memory, our judgments, our different emotions, our creativity, and so on. If we can see the mind as a football field, these are the players on the football field. And we are the directors of that. Now, the quality of the mind is activity. So, the mind has to be always active; it tries always to be active. And if you observe yourself carefully over the day, you will find that your mind is always occupied with something. And this something is mainly thoughts, because thoughts are most obvious. So, it’s running more or less 24 hours. Our mind tries to pull in. It wants to be fed; it wants to be nourished all the time. And if it doesn’t, it becomes furious in certain ways. So it is up to us how we feed our mind, with what we feed our mind, and which nourishment we give it. And according to that, our whole phenomenon, our whole being reflects, be it socially, spiritually, mentally, and so on. We all have heard so many times about the need to purify our mind, to make it clear. Because without crystal clearness, there can be no real realization, spiritual realization. There can be no proper spiritual progress. There can be no proper opening toward our own self. And how often we heard about the fact that the easiest way to do that is through the mantra. This was Gurujī’s mantra, and it is Gurujī’s bhajan that he wrote about the greatness of this mantra—about the greatness of mantras in general, and what effect it has, what benefit it gives us. I remember the first time I came in contact with a mantra was when I was attending church mass. And in May, in the month of May, there was a kind of additional exercise in the afternoon, about 5, 6 o’clock, in the church. It was called, verbally translated, “You donate or you prostrate yourself at a special time in the church and think of God.” So we boys were very curious to go there, not because of the things that happened in the church, but we could escape from home. But I was curious, actually, in the beginning, what happens in the church at this time of the day? It was about 5, 6 o’clock in the afternoon. So I passed the church, and I heard some funny sound, like murmuring, like what we know from the Tibetan monks when they repeat their sūtras. I couldn’t understand what it was, so I was looking inside the church. It was a huge church. It was dark. First, I couldn’t work out what was going on, and then I saw that there were about 15 or 20 ladies sitting there, elderly ladies. And they were repeating something together, all the time. And then I looked closer, and I saw that they had something in their hand. And first, I couldn’t figure out what it was. So I went to that man who had taken care of the altar, and I asked him what was going on. And he told me, “Look, this month of the year, these ladies come here every day and they repeat their rosary.” And it is a kind of mantra that these ladies repeat every day. And in their hands they had their rosary, just to count how many rounds they made. And in some way, this impressed me very much. I didn’t understand much about that. But I kept it in my mind. And nowadays, I understand more what was going on at that time. The second encounter with mantra I had was when I got mantra dīkṣā from Swamījī. You all know what the process is, the procedure. You all know about the practice, what one has to do, and you all have different experiences with that. After practicing for some years, there came the third encounter, and that was with Gurujī. It was in one of these troublesome nights, delirious nights, where I was in sevā with Gurujī, and sleep was little but very deep when I could. So when I was in the service of Gurujī, the first two nights it was like unconsciousness. But then on the third or fourth night, I woke up in the middle of the night and heard this sound: clack, clack,... Clack, and I thought I looked around, but I couldn’t see anything. Fell asleep again. After some time, again clack, clack. It took me three nights until I realized that Gurujī was doing his mālā. It was middle in the night—one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, whenever I woke up, he was sitting there and doing his mālā. And you all know, or those who saw Gurujī’s mālā, and it can still be seen because Swāmījī was so gracious to keep it for us as a kind of proof of how much Gurujī was practicing his mālā. If you see his mala at present, it is a Rudrākṣa mala. But when you know what a Rudrākṣa mālā is and you can feel it, you know it’s quite rough, the texture is quite rough. But not so with Gurujī’s. It is completely polished. All beads are polished, like with a machine. So how many times Gurujī had to repeat this mantra until that state of the mālā could be achieved. If we talk about the mind in a spiritual way, we always talk about mantra in certain ways. Mantra is not something that we only have in yoga or in Hinduism or in our tradition. It’s common to nearly every religion: in the Christian tradition, in the Islamic tradition, in the Sufi tradition, and so on. It is very interesting to see how this came into existence. When we talk about mantra, we normally think about our own mantra, which is the Guru Mantra. But if you look a little bit closer, our Guru Mantra consists of many syllables, of many parts, of many words. And if we look closer to what mantra means, it means actually “man” means mind, and “tra” means to liberate—to liberate the mind. That sounds very nice. As you know, there are also many different types of mantras. The most important, the most known, is Oṁ. Om is the first sound, the first vibration. What actually came into existence in the Sarga form? It means with the Om, it started; this creation started. All that which has name and form has started. After that came the three guṇas, and so on. So Auṁ is an essential part of every mantra. It’s a bīja mantra itself, a seed mantra. And every real mantra has Auṁ as a beginning or as an end. There are different types of mantras. There are healing mantras. There is a guru mantra. There are bīja mantras. There are mantras used to achieve certain siddhis. There are mantras of all kinds and types, of all qualities. That which we normally get from our Gurujī is a kind of sāttvic mantra. It has purity, and it has all attributes of divinity inside, which are necessary for our spiritual progress. It doesn’t harm when we practice it. And it is very, very beneficial for everybody, and everybody gets a different type of mantra according to his own phenomenon, according to his own constitution. Without practicing the mantra, it has no value, and it is the way how we practice, as the inherent qualities reveal themselves. Mantra is a kind of seed that has to pop up, and it can only pop up. It can only grow. It can only envelop its real being by practicing, and practicing means to put it in action, to put it in the proper soil, to nourish it, to take care, and to know how to protect. As you have a seedling somewhere planted, you have to protect it when it’s very small from all the goats and camels and other creatures, so that they don’t destroy it. Once it becomes a strong tree, it’s a different thing. It is very important how we pronounce the mantra, because inherent there is a vibration, an energy, that penetrates through all the gross matter. And when it is properly pronounced, it reaches all levels of our existence, all levels of the subtle planes. But for this, it’s important to feel and to pronounce it. If you pronounce it in a wrong way, it can have an adverse effect. For example, there is a mantra called Rāma, very common in India. It’s the name of God, and everything is contained in that. But if you repeat Rām in a wrong way, just as a kind of repetition without thinking, it can turn around. It can reveal its other quality. You say, “Rām, Rām,... Rām.” Oh, whenever you come to some place, we have our church there. Please come. You’re most welcome. Don’t miss. So it happened by chance that one day, my friend and I, we came to this place. We had some work there, and by accident, they had some prayers going on in the church. So we went inside, and there were people sitting, and we sat down, and I was listening. And first I was thinking, what’s going on? And I was listening and listening. First, I thought I didn’t hear properly. Because I heard, “Pese Lau, Pese Lau, Pese... Lau,... Pese lau.” Pese is money, and lau give. And I was thinking, what’s going on? And after two or three minutes, I was very much concentrating because I didn’t believe that this is possible. It was like it, it turned out it’s not, but praise the Lord. So in this way, many misunderstandings can come up, and if we don’t pronounce the mantras in a proper way, it can turn around and can create a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Mantra we have also in a long, long tradition, and we utilize them. And it is a great, great tool for our mind to bring our mind on the right track, to purify it, and to recharge it with a very subtle, subtle energy. We can’t control the mind. We can’t convert the mind. But we can keep it busy with the proper thoughts. And the best way is with a mantra. In the yoga tradition, it is said that mind and breath have the same roots. And you all experienced, in one or other way, or at least those who practice prāṇāyāma, that whenever we practice prāṇāyāma, it has an immense effect on our mind, on our thinking. To practice prāṇāyāma means to practice mantra in certain ways, but it is not possible to practice prāṇāyāma all the time, but with the mantra it is. Normally, we sit down half an hour, one hour per day, or whatever, Gurujī. Whichever instruction Gurujī gave us, how many mālās to practice, and then we practice. And we realize sometimes, or many times, the more we practice, the more thoughts are coming, and so... On it, it is not important to control the mind, but it’s important to feed the mind with the proper nourishment. And when we sit down and practice, we practice with our mālā. For the intellectual person, a mālā may not have any meaning. A mala may be only a tool or a kind of show-off or whatever it is. But if we look closer, mala has a very significant meaning in connection with our mantra. Not by chance, all our pictures of our paramparā, when we look at them, we can see they are connected with the mala. It shows something; it has a meaning, because if we practice with a mālā, we practice with awareness. And that is very important because many, many times it happens that by practicing mantra, we just get lost. We are not anymore aware of our mantra. But as long as we follow up the mantra with a motoric action, we are much more aware of it. A mala is a kind of highway, we would say, to a certain aim, to a certain destination. Every bead is a kind of milestone, and the mala itself is the way, and we can feel it. We can feel the mala, and we can feel much better connect to our mantra, and once we come to our aim, we come to our bead, what we call guru bead. After 108 beads, then we complete it, one round, and we turn it around and go the other way. So, with the practice of the mālā, we make a circle, we complete one circle. And when we complete one circle, we turn it around and go the other way, complete another circle. And sometimes you will experience that you get to know the different beads, the size, the texture of the beads, and you know approximately where you are. And it is not only that you know with the mala where you are, but also with the mantra. The mantra has its own vibration, but it also has its own texture. It depends on your condition—on your mental condition of the day, of the time. Sometimes the mantra feels soft, sometimes it feels a little bit rough, sometimes it goes very smooth, and sometimes you have to work very hard. What is important for the mantra is what you put inside. It has actually everything inside already. It contains everything. But what I mean to put inside is, which path, which emotions you put inside, which feelings. And that will resonate, and that will resonate to that energy, to that level in the universe from where it comes and what it vibrates with. It’s like you tune in the radio station you want to have. In the Latin word, mens is mind. And it contains the word “mentor.” Mentor is a kind of guide, a kind of teacher, a kind of master. And a mentor is one who has a healthy mind and a healthy body. So a mentor, a master is one who has a healthy mind and a healthy body, because they come together. And a healthy mind is only achieved through purity. Śrīdīpane rañjana śabaduka mañjana, issī mantra se hove mana mañjana. It is meant when Gurujī says, “You should practice your mantra.” It contains the name of your iṣṭadevatā, and it removes all your troubles, all your anxiety, all your problems in life. Who practices this mantra will be successful. This is one of many, many mantras. But that mantra given to you by a guru, by your master, is recharged with a certain energy that is limitless, that is powering all the time. And when you can connect to that, it’s a kind of source where you can draw endless energy. Mantra is a word. The word is origin. Even in the Bible it’s said, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and God was the word. There is no difference between God and the word. There is no difference between God, the name of God, it is one. You start with that, and the creation ends with that. We come to the point of practice: you can have a mantra, but you can’t hang it around your neck. It will not help you. You can say you have a mantra, but if you don’t practice it, it will not help you. Maybe you learned many mantras, different mantras from the Vedas. If you don’t practice them, they will not help you. There is a story Swāmījī used to tell about mantra. Once upon a time there was a sādhu who came to a village and he gave satsaṅg, and many people were inspired. After the satsaṅgs, two farmers came to him and asked him, “Please, can you not give us something?” He said, “Yes, I can give you something, but first I have to check if you are capable to deal with that, what I want to give you, in a proper way.” So he gave them each one soybean and said, “Next time when I come, I want to see that soybean again, so take care of that.” And he left. So one of the farmers said, “Oh yeah, yeah, I have to take care of that.” So he put it in his cupboard inside in a small box, nicely in some cotton so that it is protected, and kept it there. The other farmer said, “One soybean? If I put it somewhere, what should I do?” With that, he was a very simple man, but a practical man. So he took the soybean and put it in the earth. And after some time, this bush rose, and he collected the soybeans, 20, 30. And again, he was thinking, “What should I do with that? I cannot just keep it somewhere. I don’t know when the sādhu will come again next time. Maybe it will be one year, two years.” So he continued, continued, continued. And over that time, he had a huge stock in his storeroom. After some years, the sādhu came back to the village, gave satsaṅg again, and the two farmers came to him happily, greeting him and knowing that now they would get something. So the sadhu said, “Oh, I’m happy to see you, and I remember that last time I gave you something. So, can I see what you did with this soya bean?” So that one farmer said, “Yes, Gurujī, yes, Gurujī, please come to my house. I will show you. I kept it there, very safe.” So, Gurujī went into his house, very eager. The farmer opened the cupboard and took out the small box. And he opened it, and what a surprise. Instead of the soya bean, there was a small dead moth inside. The farmer was very much disappointed. So then Gurujī turned to the other farmer and asked, “So what did you do with the soybean?” Then the farmer said, “Oh Gurujī, you have to come with me. I cannot bring it here.” So Gurujī went with him to his big store. It was a big hall. Then he opened the door and said, “Gurujī, look, that’s all yours.” And so Gurujī was very happy and satisfied. And he gave him a mantra for his practice. So that is the story, which reflects on the way we utilize our mantra. Just to keep it in a box or on a paper will not help, will not heal anything, will not bear any fruit. But if we start to put it in the soil and attend to it properly, then it will give a very, very good harvest over time. It is only when we practice, when we do japa at a regular time—what is very important, at a regular time—because this makes our mind disciplined. It does not matter: ten minutes, fifteen minutes, half an hour. That is better, instead of three hours in one go, to have certain intervals in a day where you practice your mantra. That will help you much more. That will discipline your mind, and that will recharge your energy. So, by practice, we will gain. Mind is important for human development, and mantra is a tool to create a beautiful mind. Those ones who have a mantra can be very happy. And those ones who want to know about the mantra, seek a mentor who has a healthy mind and a healthy body, who can guide you, protect you, and give you something that is valuable for your journey, not only in this life but after life, and in those times that will come for all of us. Sat Sanātana Dharma Kī Jai