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How Guru works with disciple

Stories illustrate grace working through everyday objects and events. A stone serves as both a doorstop and a burglar deterrent. In a village, two stories about Mahāprabhujī were shared. He once foretold that gold in the hills would drive people mad, which later happened when a valuable yellow stone was discovered. He also blessed a boy who healed his neck, granting his family a lasting healing tradition, provided they do not exploit it for money. This practice continues quietly. Another story involves a webcast on remaining peaceful, which was repeatedly disrupted by instructions from Swāmījī moving the camera team, culminating in a humorous sign. The lesson was about not being disturbed by external circumstances. A personal story describes being stuck in homesickness while digging holes. A comment about a beautiful sunset suddenly dissolved the blockage, and the next morning, a lifelong physical inflexibility was gone, revealing the mind's power over the body. Serving a teacher involves learning detachment through opposites, such as sitting still until it hurts, then being commanded to sit again, or longing for food only to be forced to eat far too much in a short period, moving from desire to aversion.

"There’s gold in the hills, and it will make everybody crazy."

"You know, when you’re speaking, you really shouldn’t let external circumstances disturb you."

Filming location: Strilky, Czech Republic

Because it has a second use: it’s protection against burglars. You leave this just inside the door, and when they come in in the dark, they immediately fall over it. So, multi-purpose. I have a little story about Kāṭu’s stone. About a year ago, I was in a village where we were giving water during the drought. It was about 40 kilometers from Kāṭu, and it came out that this is actually the village where a lot of Mahāprabhujī’s relatives came from. They were showing a house where Mahāprabhujī used to come and stay when he was young. It was extremely interesting and unexpected, because nobody had said that these things were there. They told two stories about Mahāprabhujī. One, they said that someone from the village was standing with Mahāprabhujī at the Dūna, and Mahāprabhujī was pointing towards the hills in Kāṭhū. He said, "There’s gold in the hills, and it will make everybody crazy." Now everybody knows what it means. In the Kāṭhū hills, there is a type of stone which is really yellow-golden in color. As much as they can dig out of the ground, it is being exported to Europe; it’s worth a fortune. At that time, Mahāprabhujī said that nobody had any idea what was under the ground because it doesn’t show from the top. Literally now, the people there, because of the cost of the land, are fighting and are completely crazy about the land and the money involved. The other story they told is about a boy, about 12 years old, who was living in a village. Mahāprabhujī came there. The boy was performing some sort of village medicine. Mahāprabhujī had a sore neck, and he asked him to put on his neck one small broken piece of a maṭkā. The boy put on the ointment which he always used, tied it on, and Mahāprabhujī’s problem was immediately gone. He gave that boy the blessing that all his life he would be able to use that same treatment, and people with joint pain and muscle pain would get better. That would continue, and he could also pass it on through the family, as long as they didn’t exploit it to make money. That family is still running a small hospital which does that treatment in a village about 40 kilometers from Kāṭu. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard there are always 40 or 50 people in line in the morning waiting for the treatment. When I told Jog Māyānandjī about it, she said she had heard about that place. Part of the treatment, if it’s more serious, is they say to do this treatment and then go to the Bhāgīcā, to Kāṭhū, and sit underneath the banyan tree and do mantra there. So Matajī said regularly people are coming who’ve been there; they come to do their mantra, leave prasāda, and then go. It’s interesting when you hear those things that are still going on to do with Mahāprabhujī, just quietly in the village, still continuing and continuing. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jayā. To tell stories about Gurujī. But before Gurujī, I wanted to tell one story about Swāmījī. Some of you have heard it, but many maybe not. It’s from about two months ago, before I came here. It was one of Swāmījī’s little preparation exercises. We were in Jadan after Matajī’s [event], and Swāmījī was extremely exhausted. He was quite sick and staying in his room. He said to me, "You should give a webcast." I immediately thought this was a very bad constellation, because when Swāmījī says that, it definitely means he’s going to be sitting up in his room watching the webcast, and you’re going to be sitting down in the Bhakti Sāgara giving it. Probably something’s going to happen. So we started. About five minutes into the webcast, I was talking. The video team was here with the camera, everyone sitting around. Maṅgal Māṇājī was sitting in the corner. Her phone rang. She only ever answers the phone in satsaṅg when it’s Swāmījī. So when she answered, it was clear something was about to happen. She was saying, "Yes, yes," and then she stood up and came over to the video team. They had a discussion. When you’re giving webcasts, there’s a camera, a laptop, a modem—all this stuff. They started to move with all this equipment across the floor, trying to do it without disturbing me, so they were kind of crawling. Divya Purī had the camera on a tripod and was trying to move it so it wouldn’t shake. The camera moved from one pillar to another. They settled down, and we continued. Maṅgal Māṇājī’s phone rang again. She answered, got up, walked back to the video team, and they started moving back, crawling across the floor again. I’m trying to be serious, knowing Swāmījī is watching all this upstairs. Everything settled down, and after three or four minutes, the phone rings again. Maṅgal Māṇājī stands up, goes back to the team, and the whole thing starts to move again. They got back over there, settled down, and she sat down. Of course, after five minutes, her phone rings again. She comes back over, and then Avatār Purī comes through the door of the Bhakti Sāgara. He had been with Swāmījī upstairs. When the video was over here, Swāmījī had sent him down to tell them to move it over there. But in the meantime, it had already gone over there, and Maṅgal Māṇājī was already getting the new telephone call from Swāmījī. So next, Maṅgal Māṇājī and Avatār Purī are having a fight, arguing. Avatār Purī is saying, "Swāmījī said to move it over here." Maṅgal Māṇājī is saying, "Swāmījī is on the phone saying to go over there." Eventually, she gave the phone to Avatār Purī, he said it should go that way, and they moved again. They settled back down there. The webcast is going on, and Maṅgal Māṇājī’s phone rings again. This time she took out a piece of paper and started writing something in really big letters. She finished writing, came very slowly around the back so she wouldn’t disturb the camera, and stood just here, holding up this sign so she wouldn’t be in the camera. At that point, the video team started laughing hysterically because behind me is a glass door, and they could see Maṅgal Māṇājī in the door with the sign, and it was all on the camera. On the paper was written: "Swāmījī says, ‘Don’t be disturbed.’" But under that, it said there may be a storm coming, so everybody is going to go to close their windows. At that point, everybody in the Bhakti Sāgara, except for Divya Purījī who had the camera, went out. So the webcast is going on as if talking to nobody. A couple of them are closing the windows before they go out, and nobody came back. We managed to finish somehow. In the morning, Swāmījī came down to the Satguru Dabhā to meet people. By the way, the webcast topic was about remaining peaceful. When there was nobody in the room, he just very casually leaned towards me with a little half smile and said, "You know, when you’re speaking, you really shouldn’t let external circumstances disturb you." That’s the only time it happened that right after, you played the webcast in the ashram. So there you go. When you’re in the kriyānusthān and you hear some noise from outside, just remember: it can get much more disturbing than that. Another story I wanted to tell is my personal experience with Swāmījī, about how he worked with me at one stage when I was stuck. Back in 1996, I was in Jadan for the first time, planning to stay for three months. Before that, whenever I traveled, I suffered quite severely from homesickness after a few months away from Australia. At this time, if I’m honest, I was just homesick in Jadan. When you’re homesick, the food tastes bad, everything looks bad, it’s dirty and dusty, there are too many mosquitoes. I made my plan with a long list of reasons in my mind for why I had to go back to Australia. I went to Swāmījī not to ask him, but to inform him that I was going back. I couldn’t imagine how I would stay. One day we were out in the fields behind the White House, where the mountain is now. I was there with Govind Purī from Croatia, digging holes to plant the legendary Spanish olive trees. There were a hundred and eight olive trees; two remain now. We were digging holes towards sunset. I was still in this mood: "This is stupid. What am I doing this for? I want to go home." Govind Purī put down his digging tool, looked at the sunset and said, "Oh, that is so beautiful, you know, the Indian sunset, this huge orange ball that’s going down, and it seems to go down so fast." He said it’s so beautiful, and I looked at Govind Purī and thought, "You idiot. What can possibly be beautiful here?" But then after a few moments, I thought, "Well, it is. It really, really was so beautiful." At that moment, something completely melted. That blockage about going home was just gone. Thanks to that moment, and Swāmījī forcing me to that moment, that issue of homesickness I’ve never ever had again. People say, "Do you miss Australia?" I don’t. I’ll go there, and they say, "Do you miss Jadan?" I say, "No." It’s just gone. But the next day, something so interesting happened to me. Before coming to the ashram, I was a physiotherapist. When I was at university, I was the one the instructors always called to show how inflexible a human could be. They’d say, "Can you come and stand at the front and try to touch your toes?" My hands would reach to about my knees. The floor was a distant dream. Even though I’d been practicing āsanas for years trying to change that, nothing was changing. Some small difference was there, but the floor was still a distant dream. The next morning, after that event with the sunset, I went to bend forward, and I actually put my hands flat on the floor. As a physiotherapist, I couldn’t believe that was possible. But all of that stiffness was stored in my brain. It was a complete awakening about how much the mind affects what is going on inside your body. My scientific study told me it’s not possible things can change so quickly. But I could feel it and see it; some sort of knot had been undone, and then that flexibility was there. So, interesting. Dāna mana dāna guru deva parvaru, dāna mana dāna guru deva parvaru. Tathāguru mere prāṇa ādhāra, Jñānīndru mere prāṇa ādhāra, Sākhiye mere ānandhaya. Tathāguru āye nijāgaraṇvā, Jñānīndru āye nijāgaraṇvā, Sākhiye mere ānandhaya pā. Tujhe saaya naara saaya bani hari shubha avataara, paara brahma hari shubha avataara. Mere anandaya paasakhiye, mere anandaya paas. Satguru āye nijagarh dvār, gyānī guru āye nijagarh dvār. Aja sakiyai mere ānandayā pāl, valdāvananjī kāye prabhupālā, śrīmananjī kāye prabhupālā. Āj hamāre jai jai kāj, āj ham jai kāj, sakhiye mere, sakhiye mere ānandayā pāj. Satguru āye nija ghar dvāj, Kyānī guru āye nija ghar dvāj, Sakhīye mere ānandayā pāj. I had the blessing to be with Gurujī in seva for quite some time. The first day I started with Gurujī seva was in Nepal. At that time, before me, Ganeśwar Purujī, who is now in Jaipur, was in Gurujī’s seva, and he was still there. Also in Nepal, there are quite a few other people who take care of Gurujī. So I came there to learn from them what is to be done and how to do everything. But there’s a problem when there are so many people doing Gurujī seva: there’s not something for everybody to do. The first day I just spent sitting, and sitting, and sitting from about four o’clock in the morning until the afternoon. Those who are doing Kriyā Anuṣṭhāna know how your knees start to hurt after some time. This was really an all-day Anuṣṭhāna because there was absolutely nothing else for me to do. Someone else would bring the food, someone else would bring Gurujī’s water and things, help him with this and that, take messages. I should just sit there. The pain in my knees was incredible, but you can’t move because Gurujī is sitting there. The only respite was the moment when Gurujī would get up to go to the toilet. As soon as I would see Gurujī start to stand up, I would be up so quickly. Gurujī would walk inside, and I’d be standing there just enjoying having straight legs for a moment. There I was, standing up, enjoying so much, and Gurujī came back out from the toilet. He walked past me, looked with that beautiful smile which Gurujī has, just slapped me on the shoulder and said, "Beto," which means "sit down," and then he just started laughing. That was the start of Gurujī seva. After a few days of that sort of treatment, I knew how to sit. Then he let me go and run around a bit. Of course, when you’re running around all the time, you think, "He’s never going to let me sit down." The problem is when you start thinking that, then you never get to stand up again. There was one time with Gurujī where we didn’t eat for perhaps a day and a half because Gurujī wasn’t hungry. We were traveling from village to village, and Gurujī wasn’t hungry, so he never asked anybody for eating. I was [hungry], but I couldn’t say anything because if Gurujī didn’t eat, then I couldn’t eat. After a day and a half, all I was thinking about was, "When are we going to eat?" It’s one thing fasting when you have decided, "Okay, I will do this fast for so long," but it’s another thing altogether when you don’t know when it’s going to end. My entire thoughts were wrapped in this: "When are we going to eat, Gurujī? Please be hungry." Eventually, we went to some house, and Gurujī said, "Will you eat?" And Gurujī said, "Yes, yes, bring it." I was so happy. Gurujī was sitting on his bed, and I was sitting beside him. They were bringing food, and it was really good. I was eating quite a lot, and of course Gurujī was just watching. When I’d finished—should I say when I thought I was finished—Gurujī ordered from the kitchen four more chapatis. Then he told them, "Put them on his thālī, and bring more sabjī, and bring more halwā." Of course, when Gurujī gets it put there, you have to eat it. Within another five minutes, I’d gone from the pain of having no food in my stomach to the pain of having far too much food in my stomach. It was actually my training for Hungary, but it didn’t stop there. We got back in the car and went to another house. Within half an hour, Gurujī had ordered eating for me again. Full. He said, "Oh, he’s hungry. Bring him eating and put it there." Gurujī sat there drinking his chai, and I was eating a second time. I was in such pain, but somehow I managed to really struggle to get it inside. Of course, Gurujī said, "Bring him one more chapati," and so on. Then we got in the car and went to another bhakta’s house. Again, within half an hour, he had ordered again for me to eat. Three times in one hour, I’d had a complete meal, plus the extra which Gurujī was putting on top. Within an hour, I’d gone from thinking, "When am I going to eat?" to "I never want to eat again. Please, Gurujī, no more." Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jayā.

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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