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Part 1: The Ever-New Practice Oṁ Bole Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Devpurīṣī Mahādeva Kī Jai, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Madhavānanda Purījī Mahārāj Kī Jai, Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānanda Purījī Satyaguru Deva Kī Jai. Good morning. I hope you had a good swim. It’s amazingly beautiful. I want to talk about our practice of yoga. Think back to when you first started. Can you remember that feeling you had the first time you were doing classes, the first weeks you were going, or the first time you met Svāmījī? Do you remember the first moment you started practicing, or when you got the mantra and first began your sādhanā? Just think of that time for a moment and remember the way you were and how enthusiastic you were about it. It was buzzing inside of you. From my side, it was something so special, something vibrating. I wondered, where was that all the time? I could feel it was there, but I didn’t know where to look for it. That feeling we had back then is something we should try to have all the time. That’s the challenge. When we’re practicing here, although it’s a relaxed program, it’s a time to completely rejuvenate how you practice. It’s not the volume of practice that is important, but the awareness and the enthusiasm with which you do it. We need to always keep a mind like a child—not in the sense of not knowing, but in looking at something with fresh curiosity, like a child who gets a new toy and within ten minutes pulls it apart. Every time we do our practice, we also have to pull it apart to see what’s inside. For instance, when you’re doing Kaṭhūpraṇām, how is your awareness? Are you aware of it the same way you were the first time? In reality, this body and this mindset you have now are new. This is a new moment. So although you may have practiced Kaṭhūpraṇām thousands of times, this present-moment body is practicing it for the first time. If you’re practicing it for the first time, then you’re doing something exciting. It’s something new to be aware of, to pay attention to, to see what happens. It’s a whole new experience. What is the difference between doing Kaṭhūpraṇām after swimming and when you hadn’t swum? If you swam longer in the morning, how are those muscles affected when you do that āsana? How does it affect your breathing? How does it affect your sitting? Every moment is a moment to practice, a moment to learn. After this, you have a lecture about Āyurveda. Āyurveda is about health and balancing yourself. In Hindi, the word for health is svāstha. Svāstha literally means to be established in yourself. It’s not merely to be free of disease, but to be established in yourself, to be one with yourself. Sva is self, and stha is a root which starts words in English like start, stop, still, steady, and stable. So in Indian philosophy, the concept of health is about being one with yourself, understanding yourself. That is the type of health you can get from your yoga practice if you do it with awareness. As we practice more, we start to have more experience of ourselves and how we react to practice. It’s a long journey, but the beauty is in unfolding. That experience allows you to deal with more and more situations easily. Everyone will have a different experience. For instance, I have an experience from years ago when driving Svāmījī around India on long tours through different villages, to Kathu and Kailash, with 10-15 programs every day. As the driver, you know your body will be finished in the end—legs aching, with little sleep. But by having that experience again and again, and by being aware afterwards, if I could get two or three hours free to do certain āsanas, I could put myself back into balance. That comes from practicing with awareness. That type of awareness and experience is what we should all try to get regarding our daily lives. You may feel that when you come to a seminar or go to an anuṣṭhāna, you feel so good, but when you go back to work, everything goes out of balance. That is probably true, but work is not the problem. We haven’t practiced how to rebalance ourselves after work. We haven’t discovered that key to maintain or regain that balance. It just requires more practice and more awareness. Our yoga practice is for our whole life; it’s a whole life of learning. Every moment, every experience is something we can learn from and understand how to regain or maintain balance according to those situations. If you’re a guitar player, when you’re ordinary, you just play. But a master is on another level. You can see it in things like if they break a string on stage, nobody notices the difference in the music. That’s experience. Because they’ve had that experience so many times, they can immediately adjust and play the chords or strings in a different way. That experience comes through long practice of yoga, maintaining awareness, and doing sādhanā constantly. One beautiful thing about traveling around Europe is seeing people who have practiced with devotion for 40 years. When you talk with them, it’s not about a practice they found and just do continuously. It’s constantly evolving, constantly changing according to their life situation, their body as it gets older, their time as they get older. It’s a relationship that keeps unfolding between the practitioner and their practice. Some of those people I met are so established in themselves—what you would call svastha. They have such an understanding of themselves, what they can and cannot do, and what will happen when they do something. They know what they can do but will disturb them, and they know how to readjust afterwards. It’s such a beautiful thing to see. That person is a walking form of art. They’re like Svāmījī’s masterpiece. He’s given them the guidance to make this incredibly beautiful picture, which is their life. That’s what we have to do also. All the equipment is there to make that picture—with our practice, our mantra, and Svāmījī’s blessing and guidance. But that masterpiece is a life’s work. It can’t be a day without some dedication towards it. It’s like Yogeshjī’s concreting. When they start concreting a slab on the Omāśram, one of the big ones, they can’t stop until it’s finished. If they stop for a break, it will dry, and when they start the new part, there will be a crack. It won’t be a good joint. It’s the same with our practice; it has to be constantly going on because yesterday remains fresh and it joins together and goes on and on. If you have children, they are always there in your awareness, especially when they’re young. You don’t have mental holidays from them. The same with our practice: it’s always there and always should be. In our awareness, it may not be the thing in front of you that you’re doing, but a part of you should always be ringing with mantra running, and that yogic awareness of what you’re doing. Then we have something incredibly beautiful. In Strilky last week, on Monday, there was a flute player. I don’t know if anybody saw it on the webcast. This man was from Belgium. I was talking with him afterwards about his practice, his sādhanā. It was a little bit scary. I asked, “How long did you practice?” He said, “Oh, when I was practicing, really, 20 hours a day.” He said, “I was so upset when I had to go to the toilet. I felt like I was wasting time.” Twenty hours a day. For those who saw, it was a most amazing experience to watch him when he was starting. He was sitting there in some type of meditation, attuning himself with what was around—what was Strilky, what was under that beautiful big hanging tree. You could see him looking up at the tree, starting to feel it and make it part of what he was doing, listening to the other music and then finding the rāga which suited all of that. Then he started to play, and it was really special. You could see this was something he had made his entire life, and he mastered it. But when you talked to him, you understood it was a process; he was continuing on a journey. He studied with Hari Prashad Chaurasia, a very famous flute player in India. There was an interview with him a while back; he’s about 80 now. He said, “I’m getting much better as a flute player.” They asked him why. He said, “I finally understood the most important note of all: silence.” He said every note he plays is completely reliant on the silence that is in between, on the space that is in between. The real beauty in the music is the moments of silence and the relation between those two. He said when he was young, he thought the important thing was the parts he played. But now he realized it’s more important, the amount of space he leaves in between, and that silence. Think about that in relation to a yoga practice. Two things: it keeps evolving through his whole life, and also, it’s not just the importance of the things we do, but the things we don’t do—as we practice, slowly leaving behind those things which are unnecessary for us. It’s not just about leaving behind things you would call kusaṅga, or things not nourishing for you, but also, as you go further, realizing which practices are perfect or best for you, and slowly focusing more on those. Being aware that those things may be different in the summer, in weather like this, and in the winter. All of that is part of the journey we have to learn when we make our own picture. Svāmījī gives you the complete package of practice you should do. In the same way, that flute player knows many rāgas his Gurujī taught him. He knew how to determine which rāga to play in that moment, in that situation, and how to play it so it becomes in harmony with that moment. So when we practice to have that awareness, to slowly become aware and understand and learn which one of those—if you can call it like a rāga which Svāmījī has given us—which practice goes with the situation we are in now, with the physical and mental state we are in now. That is what we have to learn. That is the beauty of the practice, if you can see that it is constantly unfolding. If you can understand just that point, you’ll realize that to do that, your practice constantly requires that enthusiasm you had when you first started. Because in reality, we’re all just starting, every moment. Every situation is a new challenge, a new opportunity for learning about that sādhanā—to practice in a new situation, or to maintain that balance in a new relation or a new difficulty with somebody. Understanding our relation when we are close to Svāmījī and what is happening in us when we are very close to him, and also when he is not with us physically. In all those situations, to be able to maintain our inner balance, our inner peace, and maintain our inner sādhanā. We’re here now on this most beautiful island. As I said last night, use every moment to learn something. It should be relaxing; it should be enjoyable. But really relaxing with full intensity. Everything you do, even diving into the sea, work with that feeling. Just as clear as that water is, be as clear in your awareness of just seeing what is really there. And enjoy. I uživajte. Can we have a bhajan? Bhajan malo. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān, Kī Jāya. Śrīdīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān, Kī Jāya. Śrī Śrī Sārguru Svāmī Madhavānandajī Bhagavān, Kī Jaya. Bhajan mālo. Oṁ Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavānāṁ Nijāya, Śrīsat Gosvāmī Madhvānandajī Bhagavānāṁ Nijāya. We all know this bhajan so well. Everybody knows that it means to wake up. I’m just looking at one line in there: “He awakened that sleeping swan within us.” Think back to when Svāmījī gave you the mantra, and you’ll remember that He did awaken some sleeping swan inside us. No doubt, everybody knows that feeling. But perhaps it’s good for us to remember that it shouldn’t be His job to constantly wake the swan up; we have to keep it awake. Yes, Svāmījī awakened that sleeping swan within us, that spirituality, that love, that beauty. But it’s not our place to then come to the seminar and let Svāmījī awaken it again, and then go home and think, “Oh, you go back to bed; next seminar we’ll go and wake you up again.” There was one time with Gurujī. I was coming back from Sumerpur after a night without sleep. After we came back from satsaṅg, we were in a car called an Ambassador—maybe you know it, it’s pretty small. There were seven people: four in the back, and in the front was the driver and me. Gurujī was in the front seat. We’d slept about half an hour the night before because Gurujī kept moving; he wasn’t satisfied where he was staying due to mosquitoes. Gurujī was also tired, and I was trying to be a good sevak. Later on, I gave up. Gurujī would eventually be going, and I was trying to stay awake. But eventually, sleep pulled down my eyelids, and I’d just go. As soon as I went to sleep, Gurujī would nudge me. Again after about three or four minutes, Gurujī would nudge me. This repeated many times. Eventually, we stopped to let somebody out. Thankfully, the people in the back who had been watching this arranged the seating so I was sitting directly behind Gurujī. Then the dynamic changed: Gurujī would sleep, and I would sleep, and if Gurujī started to turn around to look if I was sleeping, the one next to me would nudge me. Somehow like that we got back to Jadan. In the same way, if that swan inside us starts to sleep, we have to give it a little kick. Get back to our practice. Get back that enthusiasm. As Gurujī says, wake up, wake up, the opportunity is passing, get on with it. Part 2: The Priceless Diamond of Human Life Do not miss this chance. This human life is a priceless diamond. Do not let it go. When will you get such a chance again? We have Swāmījī, we have the spiritual techniques, and we have the wish to be a part of this and to do it. When will we get it again? You have the Swāmījī, the method, and the desire to attain it. And we already have sādhanā, which we have been doing for years. Such a constellation of blessings is coming together. It is beyond a priceless diamond; it is something so special. So, whenever you find that your swan is sleeping, just remember Gurujī going "bang, bang, bang." Keep going, and go on and on. Another beautiful story comes from a musician, Pandit Jasraj. Perhaps you know him; he is a singer, arguably the most famous classical singer in India over the past forty years. Last year, there was an interview with him as he turned eighty, or perhaps eighty-four. Again, someone asked him that question: if you compare your singing now to forty years ago, when you were already extremely famous, what do you think of your singing now? He said, "Well, look, it depends upon the person who is observing how I sing. When I was forty years younger, the gymnastics I could do with my voice were something incredible. I cannot do that gymnastics anymore; there are certain restrictions and limitations now. If you are an ordinary listener, you would think that forty years ago was better. But if you are someone who understands music, then you will understand that in the last five years, I have understood what rāga really means." Can you imagine him saying that at seventy-five to eighty years of age, he finally started to understand what it truly is? He said that from that aspect, now his music starts to be good. For me, that was a really beautiful thing to hear. We are on our path. It may not always be perfect. But if we continue with it, if we keep practising and putting into practice what Swāmījī has given us to do, I have no doubt that some time, when we are older, we will look back and think, "Now we have finally started to understand what is āsana." Yes, we have understanding now, but to truly understand and to be an āsana, or to be a practice—Prāṇāyāma or the Mālā—is different. I know we have some understanding and knowledge about it, but I am talking about the true understanding and knowledge that are the Mantras and the Āsanas. In that same way, although everyone appreciated what Pandit Jasraj was doing before, now he appreciates the beauty of what he has understood. Even though everyone appreciated it before, now he appreciates and understands what he is doing and what he is singing. Although we do not practice looking toward the fruits of our practice, in reality, at the end, there will be one treasure that is so beautiful. When you have a building, like in the Om Āśram, the different parts are lying around on the ground—many stones, beautifully carved. Suddenly, in one period of one month, all those stones are put together, and they make a part of the building. You see the beauty of all those stones together. In the same way, with our practice, at times it just seems like lots of things lying around. We are working on them, but there is not much to see. But suddenly, in some moments, all the work of that carving and grinding in our practice comes together, and something wonderful is there. That is it. That is the practice. We have to do the carving, we have to do the grinding, we have to do the hard work also. But all that is part of the process that comes together into the picture of our sādhanā, the work of our sādhanā. So what I just wanted to say is that the bhajan is perfect for this situation. Let us all wake up again, reawaken that swan within us. It may not be sleeping, but it may be a little bit dozy. Let us make it want to fly again up into the air—not just now, not just this week, but all the time throughout our life. To constantly have in our hearts and in our mind a little bit of that Gurujī sitting in the car, and whenever we are sleeping, he goes "took." Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai. Satguru Deva Kī Jai. I think there is another field in our life where it would be excellent if we try to apply this. This is our human relations, how we communicate with each other. We know each other quite a long time, and you know the people in your daily life: the neighbours, the friends, the shopkeepers, your colleagues, and so on. We get to know each other, we get to know our neighbours, we have acquaintances, owners of shops, and people in the circle we are moving in. We have collected lots of experiences with them. Now, these experiences are always like a pattern in our mind when we meet that person again. Those experiences are like a role model in our mind, which are revealed every time we are in a relationship with that person again. So basically, we do not really communicate anymore like we did the first time. We communicate through this pattern which we have in our mind, like a very small window. In fact, we do not communicate with that person for the second or third time, but we communicate through a pattern that we have already created, as if we have narrow eyes in that relationship. In reality, there is no communication at all. It is just a repetition of a pattern that we have created in our mind. So that is another point where it would be a big chance for us to try to give up concepts. I will give a practical example. This is from long ago, before I came to yoga, before I became vegetarian. In my student time, I had a friend, and we spent quite some time together. I did not have much money, and he did not either. But I always had enough, and he never did. So the result was, he often borrowed money from me. And I willingly gave it to him. Sometimes, very rarely, he returned something, but just the next day, he would request a double amount again from me. So, it was accumulating over some months to quite a big amount—more than a thousand German marks at that time. I thought that was not a good way. We must find a way to bring it down. So I seriously spoke with him and said, "I want you to pay me something back, seriously. It does not need to be much, but something." We fixed a very small amount, I think it was only thirty marks, but every month he should pay me that much back. For some months he really did, but then he stopped. There was no communication anymore about that. He simply did not want to pay back. So then I had enough, and I went to court. Because I had many witnesses who knew him very well, I went to the court case, and it was successful. Now, he had not only to pay the money back, but from that day on, also pay interest to me. And he did a little bit. But now and then, letters always came from his lawyer: unfortunately, now he has no work; now he is this, now he is that. So again and again, all these things were reawakened in my mind. Of course, our friendship was broken. Meanwhile, I started earning money and did not really need that money anymore. Then, when again a letter from his lawyer came, I realized something: I always had to bring myself back into this angry mood to write him a letter. I realized that was not good for me. Why should I still be angry now, when it was already some years ago? So one day, I decided to write a letter to his lawyer and to my lawyer, saying I did not want the money anymore. It felt so good, like a burden on my heart was gone. It was like holding on to a certain pattern, to a certain concept: "This man has stolen money from me." I realized that for me, it was not good. It was holding on to this negative energy all the time. Now I had let go, and I felt free and open—open to meet this person again. After some years, that really happened. Just by chance, we met in the street again. Astonishingly, we could speak. We went somewhere and spent, I guess, half an hour together talking. How are you? How is your life going? It could not have happened unless I wrote that letter. It was good for me, and it was good for him. In this way, I think we are often holding on to concepts which are not good for us. This is especially important if you want to help someone. Someone comes to you and wants your support, your help in a certain life situation. "What to do? I need your help. What should I do?" The only thing that is necessary is to be completely open and receptive. Whatever I know about that person, I try to forget it in that situation and just listen. What did Jasraj say about the musician? He said, "Now I found the most important note, and that is the silence." The musician said, "I found the most important note, and that is silence." Listening means to have silence in your mind. Only when we have silence in our mind does the other person have a chance to really communicate with me and to reach my heart. That was my dinner with Andrey. He said, "You know, I had a picture of my girlfriend, and I knew her. But recently, you know what happened? For the first time, I really saw her. I looked with open eyes at this picture, and I saw how sad she is, how sad." Only when we really are open inwardly can we really receive the subtle vibration of this other person. And when we are open in this way, then the other person can open. Then real communication can happen, only then. It is also a way of Nāhaṁ Kartā, because the concept is Ahaṁ Kartā. This comes from my mind, from my experiences, what I think that I know already. And then, what has to happen in the present situation cannot happen. But to give up the concepts about others has another consequence. That means also to give up the concept about myself. We very much define ourselves through the different roles which we play in society. You are the father of these people. You are the employer of this company. You are the customer of this shop, and so on. You are the customer in this restaurant. I remember one girlfriend I had maybe thirty or forty years ago; she already criticized me at that time. In restaurants, sometimes I was too strict and did not adjust my rights as a customer, failing to see the person who is just serving there. I will repeat a small story which I told just recently, but I guess most of you were not there. A man goes every morning, before he goes to work, to a small tea shop and has his chai there. The woman who is serving there knows him very well and would automatically bring him the chai. One morning he comes, but he does not get chai. After waiting for a while, he calls her and reminds her, "Please bring my chai." But nothing happens. Now he gets a little nervous because soon he has to leave, and he calls her again. Now, because he is strict, she gets the point and comes with the chai. But what never happened now suddenly occurs: the chai falls out of her hand and straight onto his shirt. You can imagine his reaction. "First you ignore me, then I do not get chai, and now I get the chai here on my shirt, and I cannot go to work like this." This is because we are in this pattern: I am the customer, you have to serve me, and you do not do your job. That is no communication, just repetition of a pattern. Now, there would be another chance. Instead, this man could think, "There must be something special today. Now my shirt is anyway dirty, I cannot go to work like this, so I will come late to work anyway. Let me try to find out what is going on here today." This man would come down and ask the lady, "Please sit with me and tell me what is going on today." This lady feels communication is going to happen. He really wants to know, and immediately she would start crying and tell him, "You know what happened? This morning, I found a goodbye letter from my husband. He has left me in this night." Now, how our emotions change when we hear that. Now she is not anymore just the person, the server there in the restaurant. She is a real human, having a real life and a real problem. Our anger would be automatically transformed into the feeling: how can I help her? How can I comfort her? But unless we take this chance, this cannot happen. Every moment is this chance. Every meeting with someone is this chance: not to define someone through roles, through old experiences, but through a new meeting. This was already one of the messages I got from my very first yoga teacher, Robert van Heekeren, an old man from the Netherlands. When I met him, he was seventy-eight years old. He was a little engaged in some ecological work. He had organized, for example, a symposium about the dying of the forest. He had invited representatives, for example, of oil companies like Shell. I was quite skeptical. I asked him, "But do you think that makes any sense? These people, who are sent by the company, are well trained; they just make propaganda there." He said, "No, no, it is not like that." He had a way to speak so personally about them, about their family, and they really started thinking. A real communication, even with these trained representatives, could happen. It can happen. It is in our hands. But when we open ourselves in this way, it gives not only a chance to the other person. It also gives a chance to ourselves—to get out of these old patterns in which I think about myself. The core of the whole yoga is the question, "Who am I?" Mostly we know the words; it is written: yes, self-inquiry, re-quantization is about the question, "Who am I?" But are we really asking the question? Are we really open for this question, because there are so many layers of already ready-made answers covering that? When we give up these concepts about ourselves, then only this question can really come. One important point in our identification is our name. Swāmījī works on this by giving us a yoga name. I will not now talk long about this point, but this identification with our name is quite basic. Just think, what all is hanging on your name? All your personal documents, your work contract and the salary you get, your relation to your ancestors and your heritage, your contract for the flat in which you are living or the house you bought, your insurance, your bank account—our whole life is hanging on that. When Swāmījī gives us a yoga name, it is a great chance to break up something in these stiff identifications. I know one Sufi master with whom I practiced right in the beginning, before I came to Swāmījī. His name is Shabran Sabnath from Morocco. I was quite amazed. He also gave yoga names to his disciples, but he did not have so many, I guess. One girl who was teaching a yoga class also had a certain yoga name from him. Later, maybe two or three years later, when I met people and asked them about her, the communication was a little difficult. I remembered her name, I remembered she was teaching the class, but they did not really know about whom I was speaking. Until one of them got the point and explained it to me: "Do you know that our Master is actually changing our names every year?" Can you think about that? So now you are Rampurī, next year you are Kṛṣṇapurī, and then you are Praśādpurī. That is a wonderful challenge to our stiff identifications of who we are. So when we open ourselves to others, we open ourselves to ourselves. And to our Self, and that is it. Siddhipāṇam Bhagavānām Kṛṣyam. We have to adjust our name, and then we have to adjust our posture. Asato mā sad gamaya. Tamaso mā jyotir gamaya. Mṛtyor mā amṛtaṁ gamaya. Sarveśāṁ svasti bhavatu. Sarveśāṁ śānti bhavatu. Sarveśāṁ maṅgalaṁ bhavatu. Sarveśāṁ pūrṇaṁ bhavatu. Lokāḥ samastāḥ sukhino bhavantu. Oṁ tryambakaṁ yajāmahe sugandhiṁ puṣṭi-vardhanam. Urvārukam iva bandhanān mṛtyor mukṣīya māmṛtāt. Nāhaṁ kartā, prabhu dīpa kartā. Mahāprabhujī dīpa kartā he. Kevalaṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ... Ambole. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai. Śrī Śrī Devpurīṣī Mahādeva Kī Jai. Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Madhavānanda Purī Jī Mahārāj Kī Jai. Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānanda Purī Jī, Satguru Deva Kī Jai.