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Part 1: Gaṇeśa Caturthī: A Spiritual Celebration As you can see, today we have pictures of Gaṇeśjī on the walls. And on the altar, there is also Gaṇeśjī, surrounded by a few green leaves. For those who do not know, today is Ganeśa Caturthī, meaning Gaṇeśa’s birthday. Caturthī means the fourth day from Amāvasyā. When we celebrate such festivals, we can understand them in two ways. One way is religious, and the other—much more interesting for us—is as a spiritual celebration. In the same way, whenever you hear a story, you should always try to find its deeper understanding, not just a literal one. Just as listening to a bhajan is the language of wisdom, it is poetry for the wise. Yesterday, as Swami Jasrāch Purījī was telling the story about the kittens, at one point he remarked how strange it is that this is a story for children. Similarly, we can say that the story of Gaṇeśjī’s birthday seems quite odd if you take it literally. So, there is a story about Gaṇeśa’s birthday. When the devotees are celebrating, they place prasāda on every altar of Gaṇeśajī, so he has to please them and go to each and every place, taking a little bit of that prasāda. By the end of the day, by the end of the night, he was completely full of prasāda. And as he was returning, he fell down on the ground. The moon began to laugh at him, and then Gaṇeśjī cursed the moon, “How can the moon laugh at him?” It is said that on this day, it is not good to look at the moon. There is always a remedy if you seek it. You know that the remedy is always satsaṅg. But what does it mean? It means that not only today, but from today onwards, every day, and throughout our entire life, we should not look to those who make fun of someone else—especially the one who destroys obstacles on our spiritual path. When you look at the mūrti’s pictures and images of Gaṇeśjī, you will see that he holds various symbols in his hands. In one hand he holds an axe. What does it mean? If you take it literally, you cannot progress on your spiritual path. But if you ask yourself a question—just as Avatārpuri Jī asked, “How is it possible?”—and if you always ask the question “Why?”, that is the only way to move forward. What does this axe represent? It means that he is destroying, removing obstacles from the path so that you can walk through it. This axe also has a hook. With it, you can control a mighty elephant, and that mighty elephant is our mind. Swāmījī says that everyone should have this stick, this hook, to control the mighty elephant inside. In his second hand, he holds a thread—not a thread, but a noose. It means that even if you go down the wrong path, it will pull you back. If in life we think we lack his blessing, Gaṇeśjī’s blessing, because everything seems to be falling apart and going down—Mahāprabhujīp Karatā He Kevalam Mahāprabhujīp Karatā He Kevalam... He is protecting. But the question always arises: why is there a mouse? Why a rat? When problems come, or if you keep money hidden in a mattress, what will happen? You will not lose its value immediately, nor will you grow old very fast, but it will happen slowly, slowly. You cannot see it; it is like a mouse nibbling away bit by bit. And Gaṇeśajī controls these mice in our life—this subtle decline. There are many stories about Gaṇeśjī, but today we are not going to tell them all. You can easily find many on any website or in any book. This is just to plant a seed in your mind so that you may investigate further. Only in this way, if we are curious and wish to rise above the borders of religion into spirituality, can we progress. If we want to understand these things beyond the literal level, this is the only way forward. Harīo, Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān, Kī Jai, Mahārāja, Kī Jai. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Śrī Śrī 1008 Devapuruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jaya, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṃsa, Śrī Svāmī Mādhavānanda Purījī Mahārāja Kī Jaya, Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṃsa, Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānanda Purījī, Satguru Deva Kī Jaya. So Gaṇeśjī sits there. One thing about Gaṇeśjī—although it is not so evident in this picture, in many pictures it is clearer—is that an elephant has big ears and a small mouth. Big ears are for listening: more listening and less talking. Perhaps it is no accident that he is positioned at the gateway of our spiritual path, endowed with these two attributes, because we are here for learning, for listening to Gurujī, taking it in rather than just regurgitating it. We keep it inside and digest it, instead of letting words pour from a mouth larger than our ears. Another aspect of Gaṇeśjī for me is that he stands at the base of our spiritual path, guarding the gate. As Vivek Purījī said, he holds that hook in his hand to maintain control. And always, at the beginning of any pūjā, the first worship is offered to Gaṇeśjī. Yet rarely is a pūjā solely for Gaṇeśajī. On our spiritual journey, we gain control over the lower chakras. But that is not the final destination. If you went to visit a castle, you would not spend all your time talking to the gatekeeper. He is indeed one of the most important people in the castle, because he controls who enters and exits, maintaining discipline and shaping the atmosphere within. But we do not linger at the gate; we go inside the castle to accomplish what we came for. In the same way, Gaṇeśjī represents the mastery over the vṛttis arising from our lower cakras. Still, we do not spend all our time stuck with him there. We dedicate our time to ascending further. We do not remain overly long with him down there; we spend more time in the heart. As Vivek Purījī mentioned, he holds an axe in his hand. He also has a staff and a stick. You will notice that those who handle elephants use such tools in two ways: one end controls the elephant so that it does not run away, and the other end is used to prod it when the elephant must move forward. So I hope that Gaṇeśajī will sit within us and not only restrain our vṛttis and keep us disciplined, but also, when we become lazy, give us a little nudge from behind so that we keep moving forward. He somehow works from both sides at once, seeing the situation, and perhaps we need a good kick. I would like to quickly address a question that came up in Strīlī, about how to make sitting easier. It was fairly obvious from Śrīlīlā that this question must have come from someone attending the Anuṣṭhān. But many people can relate to the problem. From my personal experience, besides Gurujī making me sit, something that completely changed my sitting was that I decided not to have chairs in the office anymore. We built a table so that I could sit on the floor, as is the tradition in India. This meant that most of the day I spent sitting cross‑legged on the ground rather than in a chair. This brought many more benefits than I had imagined. You are never short of chairs in the office anymore. Before, if five guests arrived and there were only three chairs, it created a problem, and you had to quickly find more chairs. Now, if twenty people come into the office, no problem—they can all sit on the floor, and everyone feels happy with that. Now, obviously, I don’t think you can do that in your office here in Europe. It is difficult. But there are certain situations where you can put this into practice. When we view our practice as something integrated into everything we do, you must seize every opportunity to gain benefit. If you are watching television, rather than sitting on the sofa, sit on the floor. If it is possible in your flat, when eating, instead of sitting at a table and chair, arrange a place where you can eat on the floor. If you are playing with your children, sit down on the floor with them rather than on a chair or sofa. These are small adjustments, but you will be sitting and you won’t even notice that you are sitting, because your attention will be on what you are doing. And as you know, if you have trouble sitting, the worst thing you can do is start thinking about your legs and how they are feeling. It is so much easier to relax when your mind is on something else. In those situations—whether eating, watching television, or playing with children—your consciousness is less on your legs, and it is amazing how much they relax and how much easier sitting becomes. These are just a few examples, but you can surely find others in your daily life. If you struggle with sitting and want to improve, weave it into small moments here and there. Obviously, do not push to the point of pain. You may not be able to sit for an hour at the computer or while watching television comfortably, but do it within your limits. Slowly, slowly, it becomes easier. If you have a laptop, you can arrange to use it on the floor as well. Perfect. Just fifteen, twenty, or half an hour here and there makes a difference to your sitting. And it does not take any extra time out of your day, because you would be doing those activities anyway. It is a way of supplementing your practice without demanding more time. Give it a try. As you all know, Swāmījī gave me the name Gajānand, which is simply another name for Gaṇeśa. So naturally, I have been pondering its meaning for some time. And of course, as Vivek Purījī said, there are countless stories. Let me just add one small story that I truly love about the mouse. I heard it in India. It was said that this mouse was originally a Rākṣasa—a mighty demon fighting with Ganeśa. Moćan demon koji se borio s Ganeshom. So there was a long and hard fight, but finally Gaṇeśa brought him under control. Then, with his power, he transformed the demon into this tiny mouse and made him serve him, because the mouse is meant to be the vehicle of Gaṇeśa. Now, what does this demon represent? It is a symbol for our mind, which tries to dominate us. Bringing it under control is a hard struggle, but once we succeed, the mind must serve us. Other aspects of Swamiji’s teaching I find even more important than all these stories. As Swamijī often says, Mahāprabhujī did not write voluminous books; all his teaching is contained in the bhajans. If you look at the bhajans, for example, the ones we always sing at the beginning of a satsaṅg are dedicated to Gaṇeśa. We have some dohās and mantras dedicated to Gaṇeśa. And we have two, or actually three, bhajans in which Gaṇeśa is mentioned: “Padaromere,” and also in the bhajan “Chalo Chalo Yi Sahayyan,” at the end comes “Ho Ghananami Ganesh.” When we look at how this bhajan “Padaromere,” which is Gurujī’s bhajan, actually addresses Gaṇeśa—let us see how he addresses him. The first line itself says it very clearly. Part 2: Please Come "Padarom Mere," that means — please come. "Mere Gaṇapati," that means — my Gaṇeśa. Gaṇapati is just another word for Gaṇeśa. But he does not say, "Please come, my Gaṇeśa." He says, "Mere Gaṇapati Deva Guransa," and you have just put "Deva Guransa" the other way around as "Gurū Dev," so it becomes "my Gaṇeśa Gurū Dev." So, in fact, this bhajan is not dedicated to Gaṇeśa. It is dedicated to Mahāprabhujī, to the Gurū Dev, and to the Gaṇeśa qualities that Mahāprabhujī embodies. He says, "Please, Mahāprabhujī, my Gurū Dev, come. You are for me the Gaṇeśa, you are for me the remover of obstacles." We find the same theme in the other bhajan by Mahāprabhujī, "Sumāru Gaṇanāmī." And it appears even more clearly in the bhajan "Kyā Pūcho Kesā Dī Paḍāyālo, Sātyā Kahu Esā Paramakṛpālā." This is a bhajan by Holī Gurujī about Mahāprabhujī. He begins with the question, "You are asking how Mahāprabhujī was?" To tell the truth, the refrain serves as an introduction, and then each verse gives an answer. This is a long bhajan with thirteen verses, and each one describes one or two aspects of Mahāprabhujī. So, he says, he was like Brahmā, he was like Śiva, he was like Kṛṣṇa, he was like Hariścandra, he was like Gaṇeśa. And in the end, he says, "I saw so many countless forms in him, and still there is no end." This finally made it completely clear to me how I should relate to Gaṇeśa. Honestly, I do not feel — and I am speaking not personally about myself — I do not feel really like a Hindu. Inwardly, I am always a little bit like an observer of all these stories. But this perspective makes perfect sense to me. All these are just different aspects of the Divine, and for me, they are all represented in my Gurū Dev. So, when we sing "Padarom Mere," in the end, we are actually inviting Swāmījī, we are inviting Mahāprabhujī — please be here, be present, and remove the obstacles. But once, Swāmījī went even further in his explanation of Gaṇeśa. The key lies in the name itself. Gaṇa-īśa, and īśa is short for Īśvara, meaning the Lord of the Gaṇa. So what, then, is the Gaṇa? If you look in the dictionary, Gaṇa is described as the minor gods — minor, meaning not like Brahmā, Viṣṇu, or Śiva, the main aspects of God — but rather elements of the creation. This is the aspect which… you see, especially in the Ṛg Veda, the whole creation is seen as holy, as divine. Sūrya does not just mean the sun; it means the Sun God. Bhūmī is Mother Earth, the Divine Mother. All the different aspects of creation are divine principles. These are the gaṇas, the su-gaṇas. Actually, you could say the tattvas, the elements, these are the gaṇas. So now, when we think again, what does Gaṇeśa mean? It would mean the one who controls all these elements of creation. And control here means to bring harmony and balance. Suddenly, we are very close to what Swāmījī always explains as yoga. How often Swāmījī explained: there is one principle which balances the universe, and this I call yoga. So, the one who controls, who balances the elements, is the yogī. And for me, that is the deepest understanding of Gaṇeśa. All the teachings that Swāmījī gives us are aimed at helping us transform ourselves into Gaṇeśa — the one who balances, who controls everything. As Swāmījī often says, the Guru aims at transforming the disciple into himself. In the bhajans, we call upon the Guru, saying, please remove the obstacles for us. And the Guru answers and teaches us how we can actually remove the obstacles ourselves. This is how I understand Swāmījī’s teaching. Hariya. Going through Europe, I am starting to assume at least one aspect of Gaṇeśajī. Gajānand was just talking about obstacles. One of my favorite stories from the Rāmāyaṇa touches on that topic. It is not about Gaṇeśajī, but about Hanumān. It is the moment when he enters the forest, gives the ring to Sītā, and afterwards gets surrounded by rākṣasas who want to attack him. He looks at them and sees that the weapons in their hands are divine weapons, capable of destroying him completely. In the Rāmāyaṇa, as written in the Tulsī Rāmāyaṇa, there is a singing part, and in between are the Dohās, those two lines where the meter stops and changes. In that text, it is sung, it is intoned, and then comes a line of explanation. In one Dohā, Hanumānjī says, "I am surrounded by these rākṣasas with divine weapons." And then he adds, "But if I do not think they are divine weapons, then they will not be able to have that effect upon me." If we do not think about that divine weapon, it will not have an impact on me. And then he simply smashes them. That is the essence. All of our personal obstacles, which we think we have — yes, we have them, yes, they are with us, they are ours. But whether we see them as just an ordinary arrow, or see them as something with a nuclear warhead on the end of it, that is up to us. Hanumānjī, at that point, turned and looked at those things about to attack him, just as our personal issues attack us, and he saw that they were big. They appeared to be something huge, insurmountable. But then he realized that those issues had power over him only because that power existed in his mind. If he saw them differently, they were not so big. That is the way we have to look at our own issues which we must deal with in order to assume that form. How big we see those obstacles as being is in our mind. Do we look at them with the attitude that something is too big for me, or with the attitude, "Okay, I will start working on it, and it will slowly get smaller. I can deal with it, no problem." It may seem tough sometimes to think like that, but it is true. The decision about where we place that obstacle is up to us. Most of you know Father David in Australia. He was with Swāmījī at the Kumbha Melā, and he has attended several of the peace conferences here. I do not think you can quite imagine how busy that man is. For one of the states of Australia, he runs the Catholic Church. Essentially, he is like the general manager. He manages everything: the priests, the training, the schools, the churches. And he does that for half the day, because the other half of the day, he is involved in government work on so many committees. He helps people with homelessness, with mental problems, with drug issues. He is on so many different things. And yet, he still seems calm. Once I asked him — it was a time when there were many problems in the church in Australia and many problems in the government department where he worked — I said to him, "How do you deal with so many problems?" He replied, "No, no, I don’t have any problems." He said, "They are not problems, they are issues." I thought, okay. We might say "challenges." But it is the same thing. He explained that an issue is something you just deal with and find a solution to. It is a small task; you just work on it and find a solution. A problem, however, is something about which you already feel tension before you even start to look at it. A problem carries tension and anxiety from the very beginning because it is labeled a problem. "Oh no, I’ve got a problem." You can smile and say, "I’ve got an issue," but smiling and saying you have a problem is a different matter. It is the same thing, but wrapped in different clothes. The wrapping is different, and the reaction to it is completely different. If someone came here in a police uniform, and then that same person came a few minutes later in a completely different outfit, we would react in completely different ways. How are you looking at that thing? How do you relate to it? That makes a very big difference in how you will deal with it. And Hanumānjī dealt completely differently with those rākṣasas in the garden, which were obviously a representation of his mental issues. If you look at it from a spiritual perspective, when he goes into a garden, a garden is a place of nature, a little bit wild. It is actually a place of emotion. And these things come and attack. When we look within ourselves at our own things, we should make them issues, do not make them problems. An issue is something you deal with day by day. You may not find the solution today, but it is just running its course, and you will get there. I think, as Vivek Purījī and Gajānandjī were saying, there is so much contained within those stories. You can see them from so many different perspectives, and at different stages in your spiritual life, they will have a different meaning at that time. As Gajānandjī said, we should search to try and embody those qualities, to find them within ourselves. There is nothing that is talked about that is not within us, that is not there to be awakened. And that is the journey: to awaken that Guru teaching, to awaken what is expressed in so many different ways. That is the journey that Gurujī speaks of — how to awaken it in ourselves, and what is being told in so many bhajans. Today we will have a great day again. I have to mention one little thing: I was amused with myself yesterday. I was thinking of the bhajan "Śobāho Satsaṅgārī." It talks about all the different ways that people are transformed by satsaṅg, giving examples like a tree growing next to a sandalwood tree acquiring its scent, or the way that water, when it flows into the Gaṅgā, also becomes Gaṅgā water. As I was arriving a little later for satsaṅg, I thought I could add another line: that when you spend time in a seaside town, you start to run on seaside town time, and you begin to take on more and more the color of the sun. Perhaps there is a whole new bhajan in there, written just about Īj. It expresses that same truth — when you come to satsaṅg, it transforms you. When you come to Swāmījī and spend time with him physically, mentally, or in your sādhanā, something transforms inside. You start to assume a little bit of that quality. As we swim more and more, our skin gets a little bit saltier, and this is the embodiment of the saying we have in India, "Jaisā Saṅg, Taisā Raṅg." As is your company, so is your color. As is your mental company, so is the color of your thoughts. As is the intention of the people around you, so is the intention which you slowly start to share with them. And that is the beauty of satsaṅg, the beauty of being together. Oṁ Bale Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān, Kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Devpurījī, Mahādeva, Kī Jai, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁsa, Śrī Svāmī Madhavānanda Purī Jī, Mahārāj, Kī Jai, Viśvagurujī, Guru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara, Paramahaṁsa, Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānanda Purī Jī, Satguru Deva, Kī Jai, Gaṇeśjī Mahārāj, Kī Jai.