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Part 1: The Grace of the Guru: A Journey with Gurujī O Gurur Viṣṇu, Gurur Devo Maheśvara, Gurur Sākṣāt Parabrahma, Tasmai Śrī Guruve Namaḥ. Dear sisters and brothers here in the āśram and around the world, dear yoga practitioners, greetings from Jadan Āśram. Today we are celebrating. Actually, every day is a day for celebration. A beautiful creation which God made on this planet is in front of us. And we came here to this planet by our own will to learn, to get experiences. And with that experience, to travel further through time and space. But the majority of us are stuck. We are stuck in this physical body, with the mind, intellect, education, social levels, and so on and so on. And because we were stuck, we had days to celebrate, and we had days where we are crying, where we are sad. But there are some who did not get stuck, or who came again over the border to remember, to be aware, to have full knowledge and experience that we are the ātmā. We are not this body; we got a body for the time being, and we will have to give it back. So we are celebrating the birthday of such a great soul who is over, or who was over, the border—on the other side of the border, which we can call the border of self-realization, the border of knowledge—our dear holy Gurujī. As per the Indian calendar, he was born on this day. So what to say about such a great, great soul? We are praying to them. Actually, in our prayers, we are glorifying them. It is singing, or we are singing the glory to those who are great souls, who are knowers, who are on the other side. I was lucky enough to be in Gurujī’s sevā for some time, more than half a year, and then for many, many, many more years, very close to Gurujī, next to him. So for this day, I would like to share some of my experiences to continue those stories which were said on the Guru Pūrṇimā Day by Colonel Sāhab and by some other disciples about Mahāprabhujī, about Holy Gurujī, about Swāmijī. It was quite far back, 1991, it was April, and I was sent by Swāmījī to Nepal to get my visa extension, or to get my new visa, to stay in India for six months more. I asked Swāmījī for how long I should stay in Nepal, and he said, "You know, one month, two months, just that you will get a visa, a six-month visa, or maybe you should try to get a study visa for one year plus." So I applied for a visa at the Indian embassy in Kathmandu and decided to go trekking to Mount Everest base camp. It was very great, very nice. Suddenly, I was trekking for three weeks, more than three weeks. Nearly, I came to the base camp. I was at a height of more than 5,000 meters. Suddenly, it came into my mind, "Yogesh, go back to Jadan." Go back to Jadan, and I went. So that way, which I was walking for three weeks, I was running back down in about one week. I came to the embassy, and I tried to get a visa. They said, "Oh, we sent your papers to Europe, and did not get a reply, and so on and so on. You have to wait." So I was coming to the embassy every day, waiting. And one day, I had enough. I said, "Oh, Gurujī. Mahāprabhujī, I want to go to Jādan. I have no wish to stay here for one month and wait for my papers to come." So, sitting on the stairs, I was thinking intensively on Mahāprabhujī. Suddenly, one man came. He said, "If anybody has any problem, come with me." What’s up? I was behind. It was the first secretary of the embassy, the person who decides about the visas. I told him that I am in Jadan doing sevā, and I’m applying for the visa. I would like to go back. He said, "Yeah, no problem, I will give you." And I got a visa immediately. The next day I was ready. On the way back to Jadan, I came to Jadan, and Gurujī said, "Oh, just good you came. You want to go with me to Mount Abu or to the Himalayas?" I said, as you wish. As you wish, wherever you go, I will go very happily. He said, "Okay, let us go to the Himalayas." We sat in the car after a few days of preparations, two boys behind, two Indian boys, young boys, sevaks, and I was driving. Driving was my passion many, many, many years back, and I was thinking how I’m a good driver. So, of course, I was egoless, no ego was at all within myself, and I was driving the car and I was thinking, oh, these drivers, they have no idea about good driving. I was overtaking one truck, and a second truck, and a third truck, and Gurujī was enjoying. But I was thinking how these drivers are not good, how they have no knowledge about driving, and so on, and so on. And Gurujī decided to give me a lesson. So when I overtook a big truck, in front of him was coming a truck, was coming towards me, towards us. I calculated that I had enough space to overtake the truck, but suddenly there were two trucks, not one. So there was no place to come in back on the side. And my eyes got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I was looking at that driver who was driving the truck coming towards me and praying, "Please apply the brakes," but he did not. He looked at me, I looked at him, and we were observing each other. Karata Mahāprabhudīp, Karata Mahāprabhudīp, Karata He Kevalam. Gurujī was shouting at me, "What are you doing? You are sleeping." I didn’t see the speed breaker. Big one, and I was actually very embarrassed. My ego, my driver ego, went quite down. But still, I thought it could happen to everybody. And when I thought this, again a little bit more self-confident, again we were flying. It was again one big speed breaker, and then I was finished. So I came on the place of the good, good donkey, which can be nicely guided. We are traveling further without big surprises, slowly, slowly from one city to another, visiting some disciples here and some disciples there, and so on and so on. After a few days of traveling, we came to one very small village. Gurujī said, "Okay, Yogesh, park the car on the road. We will stay here in the school under the road." And people came, Gurujī had a beautiful satsaṅg. And in the evening, Gurujī said, "Go once more and check if the car is empty, and take everything out of the car." So I went and I emptied the car, except there was one small bottle. I said, "Oh, doesn’t matter, it can be here." The next morning, the car was open, everything was searched, and the bottle had disappeared. Okay, it happened. We are traveling further towards Gangotri. When we passed Chamoli, and I think Uttarkashi, then, at one place, Gurujī said, "Stop the car," and he started to pray. He said, "Yogesh, this is the valley of the gods. Gurujī is here, and living great, great yogīs, Bābājī and many, many others. Alakhpurījī is here." So after a short prayer, we went further, and in the evening we came to Gangotri. Gurujī was received by some sons, sannyāsīs, escorted to one of the āśrams, and in the morning he said, "Go for darśan into the temple," and when they came back he said, "Go for darśan." And then he said, "Okay, we had darśan, now let us go back." So, from that point on, actually, the interesting story starts. When we said to the car, I realized that there are no brakes in the car. The brake pedal went all the way to the bottom. But I was thinking, okay, now why should I bother Gurujī with that, that we have no brakes? On the road, which was very steep, I said, "Okay, I’ll drive in first gear." And really, I was driving very slowly, slowly, to the first city, to the mechanic. The mechanic repaired the brake, but at the same time, I saw that there was a small leak of diesel on the diesel pipe which is supplying diesel to the engine. So I told him to tighten that knot a little bit. He did not tie the knot; he opened it and replaced the visor. But when he tied the knot, he did not—he missed the thread, so he tied under strange angles. So what he did, he actually cut the thread of that bolt, actually it was the head of the filter, the diesel filter, and he said the car, the diesel was leaking much more than before. He said, "Oh, you go to your first city and then you will again repair it." You have to repair it with a special epoxy-based compound, which will seal the leak. So we went further with Gurujī, and we came to the next village, the next city. There we stayed in the āśram of Swami Śivānanda from Ṛṣikeś. It was a very nice time. And I went to the workshop, and the mechanic used that compound. He said, "In 24 hours, this will be dry, and then you can easily drive the car further." We started the next day, and very near Gangotri—so we were going to Gangotri—very near to Gangotri, very high in the mountains, one bus overtook us. He said, "Oh, your diesel is leaking, your diesel is leaking." Śrī Śrī... Gurujī said, "Okay, you just repair this, use this compound. Mahāprabhujī will take care, and I will walk to Gangotri because it’s very near." Actually, yeah, I will walk, and you come behind after one day. So I was applying that compound again around that thread, around the filters, and suddenly one of these boys came back. He said, "Gurujī said, ’Immediately, you should come.’" I was thinking, how? If I start all this, this bolt will immediately be removed from the thread, from the head of the filters, and immediately this will start to leak. But Gurujī Vākya, this Guru Vākya, let us go. And then I was praying very intensively to Mahāprabhujī, "Please, Mahāprabhujī, let us keep this diesel pipe together with the filter so far as we don’t come to the mechanic who will really repair, or he will replace all these filters." Gurujī, we came to Gaṅgotrī, we had a darśan, we stayed overnight, and we went back. No problem. It was working perfectly, except that on the way we lost the silencer, and we had a fire on the car, and so on and so on. There were many, many other small things. We came to one small village with a beautiful āśram, and Gurujī said, "Yogesh, what do you think? Should we stop here?" It was beautiful. On the edge of the Gaṅgā, a cliff—a vertical cliff down with some small stairs—200 meters down was the Gaṅgā. Actually, Alaknandā, not Gaṅgā, we were before the Prayāg. And we spent a few beautiful days there. It is difficult to explain the atmosphere. I was in love with Gurujī. It’s simply, I would go under his skin if it were possible. And Gurujī was just divine. One day they had the conference of the teachers of that area, Uttar Chant. And Gurujī said, "Go and speak about education and women’s emancipation in Europe." Gurujī’s wish, I went without any problem. I did not speak English, or just a few words. I learned English in school, but I was number one from the back in the classrooms. So, but when my time came, I was listening to myself, and I could not believe what I was hearing. The lecture was... no, it was good. So I just bowed down to Gurujī. He said, "Okay, let us go now, sit and meditate." So we went to sit under a big neem tree, a big, big neem tree. And there were great green mangoes on the tree; the tree was full of mangoes, thousands of them, hundreds of kilos. Gurujī was looking up, and he said, "Well, this could be very good pickles. What do you think to bring one? Bag, big bag, 200 kilos of mangoes to Jadan. We can make good pickles." He said, "Yes, very nice." He said, "Look at that cloud. There is a cloud coming." He said, "Very dangerous, rākṣasas." I didn’t comment. But in five minutes, we were in such a storm that I grabbed for whatever was there on the floor. And I tried not to be blown away. And hoping that I will not get a mango on my head. Because suddenly we were in the middle of the mango shower. It passed very fast, and we are sitting in the field of green mangoes with one circle around us. I said, "Mahāprabhujī, Gurujī, there are mangoes everywhere, but here there is nothing." He said, "Mahāprabhujī, protection." He said, "Go bring bags and collect." So I went, and then Gurujī realized that I had no shoes. Actually, I had a yapanke, or I don’t know how you call this. In India we call them chappals, in our country we call them Japanese slippers, plastic, very simple slippers. He said, "Where are your shoes?" I said, "Gurujī, most probably they are already flying, or they are swimming in the Gaṅgā towards Haridwar." He said, "Okay, go and search." So I went to search, and my logic would say, "Okay, the wind was coming from the east, so I had to go to search on the west." So I went on the west side, and I was searching everywhere, and I could not find them. I went down to the Gaṅgā, but I could not find them. I came back. Gurujī said, "Did you find them?" I said, "No, Gurujī." He said, "Yeah, this is because you are searching on the wrong side. You should go there. So, from where was the wind coming?" Okay, Gurujī said there. So I went there, no questions. And they were both nicely placed on one rock above the Ganges, nicely just to put your legs into them. Great. Gurujī said, you see, all this is the prasād of Mahāprabhujī. He can give you whatever he wants. He didn’t say, "I can give you whatever he wants." We were still there in that āśram for a few days, and once I mentioned, "Gurujī, you are so great." He said, "Me? No. Whatever I got, I got from Mahāprabhujī, but Swāmījī? Swāmījī was already born as a great yogī. He is great." Part 2: A Journey with the Master: Stories of Grace and Siddhi We returned to Haridwar from that trip, and the engine problem persisted; everything was okay. We came to an ashram where we were staying. Gurujī was getting his place, and everything was nice. He said, "Okay, go to the mechanic, and he will replace the part that is broken." I went, and with me was a man who guided me to where the mechanic would be. It was about twenty meters before that, again, that the engine blew apart. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jeho. So this is how the sons work. They are masters of life, of the elements. They are Trikāl Darśīs. They see the past, present, and future. They see us through and through. They know our past. They know our thoughts, and that which is behind our thoughts. But they pretend that they are not knowing anything. However, if the disciple manages somehow, by the grace of the Guru and by his good karmas in previous lives, to come close enough to the Master, to realize the Master, then the Master will start to play with so-called siddhis. He will not hide them in front of the disciples. But for that, one needs to develop that bhāv, love, bhakti. There is nothing else except the Master. And then the master will open his back, and the shower of kṛpā will come to the disciple. It is our choice. It is our choice. We want, or we don’t want. Of course, everyone will say, "Yes, I want." But there are also the tests. Do you really want it? Is your bhāv, is your love original, or is it just temporary? The car was repaired. I hope I’m not too long. The car was repaired, and we were coming back to Gurujī. Gurujī said, "Yogesh, let us go to Ādarśam." Okay. At that time, Swāmī Premānandjī phoned me. He said, "Yes, there is one disciple." He was with us in Jadān at that time. He had just come to Haridwar and would like to meet you. He was with me in Kathmandu. He just came when I was going. He came and he did one not very nice thing. Maybe it’s not good to tell you, but I will be a little bit short on that. He didn’t want to wait for a visa so long, so he simply lost his passport. Mahāprabhujī Karatā He Kevalam. Our address and Premānandjī got that address, and he phoned to that, or actually when this boy again phoned to Jadan Ashram—because at that time we did not have mobile phones. We were going to STD, and from STD we were phoning to the Ashram. So when he again phoned, Premānandjī gave him our address. But that time we had already shifted to another place, and again to another place. So in one day we changed three places in Haridwar. We came back to Jadan, and that disciple also came after one and a half months, maybe two months later. I was with Gurujī in Jaipur Āśram. He came exhausted, sick. I said, "What happened to you?" He said, "You see, I got your address, and I rushed to meet you in the Ashram. But when I rushed out of the STD, jumped in a rickshaw, I realized that I forgot my documents in that STD. So I immediately turned the rickshaw back, but they were gone. My air ticket, my passport, my money, everything is gone." And then he decided that he still would not go to Jadan, or actually he should go to Delhi and back to America. He decided he would go by himself to Gangotri. So he went, and what happened? The rainy season started, landslides came, and completely closed the valley. So he was blocked in that valley of Gangotri, in Gangotri village, for nearly one month without money, without food, and he was eating in the army camp. They got small, small, small portions of the food, and then he was rescued by helicopter after a long time. It is a big difference to go to the Himalayas with the master or without him. To go to the Himalayas with the wish and will to do seva, or to go to the Himalayas to enjoy and look here and there, everything is based on lies or cheating. So that boy got a very, very big lesson. This is a very small story from the Himalayas, from one of my trips, or one trip, one journey with Holy Gurujī. Many of you heard it, some maybe not, that’s why I repeated it now. And I would like to add one more small event. It happened maybe five or six years back. Swamiji and Holy Gurujī were—it was before Holy Gurujī was departing, actually, it was his last year of life. Swamiji and Holy Gurujī were in Kāṭu Āśram with the disciples, with the group, for the New Year time; it was winter. And Swāmījī phoned me, he said, "Yogesh, come for Mahāprabhujī’s Varṣī, for the celebration of Mahāprabhujī’s birthday, to Kathu." At that time I was working quite a lot, so after a full night of work, I sat in the car and started. But already after a few kilometers, I got very, very, very sleepy. So I was trying to sing and then pull my ears and hair, and I don’t know how to keep myself awake. I managed to come 100 kilometers far, maybe 30, 40, or 50 kilometers from Jodhpur towards Kāṭu. At that time, the roads were not as wide as they are today. Whenever you were driving and passed a truck or another car, you had to go a little bit off the road. On that gravel part of the road, from the bitumen, the edge of the bitumen, it was very, very rough, and sometimes that sandy part was full of holes, so it was not easy to drive. So, I managed to come so far, and it was absolutely impossible to drive anymore. But I didn’t give up. Swāmījī said, "Come," and I was stubborn. Shantījī said that I am stubborn. I am. Sometimes it helps. Suddenly, I heard a very clear voice, and it said, "Don’t worry, just sleep. Mahāprabhujī will drive for you." And that second, I slept. Ah, it was good sleep. I woke up completely fresh behind the steering wheel, and I immediately checked the mirrors. I saw the trucks behind. It means I had to go from the road down. Was I sleeping? But I was somewhere else. I was not in that area where I was. I don’t know, I was driving 50 kilometers, 20, 30, no idea. Such happenings give a strong impression on the person who goes through them, who experiences that. And of course, I was full of devotion towards Mahāprabhujī and so on. So I came to Kathu, bowed down to Swamiji. Swamiji said, "You came one day too early." And I bowed down later to Gurujī, he was in his room, and Gurujī said, "How, no, how is it when Mahāprabhujī is driving a car for you?" That was the first thing he said. So that moment for me was very clear: I was not dreaming. It was reality. Such things are happening. They are true. There are stories. And as I said, it will happen if we are able to come close to the Master. If we are able to remove the fears and the doubts, and if we develop the bhakti and the bhāva, then these things become part of daily life. But Holy Gurujī used to say, "I am so far from you." Or, in other words, the Guru is as far from the disciple as the disciple is from the Guru. Take a measuring tape and measure. So if we are closed and with a lot of devotion, bhakti, these things are reality; they are happening daily. There are so many stories about Holy Gurujī. He liked to play with us disciples when we showed a certain degree of devotion. He showed us that. Why? Maybe, or I would guess, just to show his divine nature. And after that, of course, tests were coming. And that was a different story. Tests, as everywhere in the schools, are there in the spiritual school also, and there are many, and they are hard. Holy Gurujī said, "Whatever I got, I got from Mahāprabhujī." But Swamījī was born as a great yogī. Yes, I remember times, and I believe many of you who are here, many years back, Swāmījī sometimes said something, sometimes he did something, but then he stopped. The things, siddhis, or the powers around him, around Guru Dev, they are with him. Swamiji knows what is going on now in this hall, and what is going on now in your homes, wherever you are, not only in your homes, but within you also. But he’s not showing. Once I asked Swamiji, "Why, Swamiji? Holy Gurujī was showing us. And you’re showing nothing." And Swamiji said, "Would you like that a line of people is standing from Jadan till Jaipur?" I said, "No." He said, "Then let us be peaceful." But it does not mean that this does not exist or that it is not. Oh yes, it is. A few months back, here was our Guru sister from my country, and she said to me, "Do you remember that fire we had 15 years back in Jadān?" I said yes. You see, Swamiji told me a year back, if I remember it, and maybe it’s hot, and it’s okay. And I said yes, Swamiji, I remember. And Swamiji said, you see, that time was in your destiny that you would die. Prabhujī’s grace, nothing happened to you. It was a year back, maybe less than a year. We were working on the Om Āśram, and Swāmījī came with a group of people. He sat in one place where we were working, below that place, and was there maybe half an hour, three... A quarter of an hour, giving satsaṅg to the people. We went for lunch; I was with Swamiji. Swamiji, after that I went to inspect the work, and I fell through the slab. Through one slab, it was an iron plate that had opened. We were preparing for the concreting, for the shuttering. The shuttering form had opened, so I fell down, and down was a hole of 12 meters. I grabbed some piece of iron and broke just one rib. So, these things are happening. Swāmījī will say nothing, but he is doing. Who knows how many lives we jumped over doing sevā here in this āśram. Many of you will remember Kriya Śakti had a similar accident. The iron plate opened, she fell through the hole, she fell on the spine column, on the backbone. And she was transported by normal car to the hospital because she had great pain. To Pali, they found that she had broken two vertebrae, and when we informed Swamījī, he said immediately she should go to Delhi, to the special hospital for spine injuries. They brought her back with the rickshaw in a sitting position with a broken spine, and then they put her on the train. Then, when she came to Delhi, immediately Dr. Jam put her in the special immobilization van and brought her to the hospital, and so on and so on. In Jaipur, it was downloaded from the, how you call that, stretcher, nearly like a piece of cake. Nothing happened. In Delhi, they checked and they did not find that two vertebrae were broken, but cracked in two others, much higher. She came back, immediately started to work, and Kriya Śakti would like to be sure that nothing happened. So whenever some doctor comes from Europe, some good doctor, she shows him the MRI records, and nothing is there. She was bitten by the snake, a viper, nothing. She got bites from 40-50 bees while saving the life of a worker who was attacked by the bees, nothing. This is Guru Kṛpā. This is how the Guru works. It is not science fiction. It is reality. But still, some people, disciples, they try to say that this is not true, that Mahāprabhujī was not Mahāprabhujī, that Gurujī was not Gurujī. Their choice, they took the path, they took the path of blame, non-believing, anger, greed, whatever you want. It is a choice of everybody where he wants to walk, what he wants to do with his life. We can blame, or we can neglect, or say this is not true. It is true. Mahāprabhujī was giving life to the dead child. Giving eyes to the blind, giving eyesight, the blind person starts to look again. They are still living; they are among us. We were listening to them. Many of you who were listening to that were talking to them. So it is, it was, and it will be. We are on the boat of love, tolerance, and understanding, and the Captain is Swāmījī. We have the right to get off the boat anytime. But this does not mean that the boat disappeared and that it never was. It is not correct to blackmail the things which you experienced and now you are neglecting. So, Gurujī was a great saint, a great, great saint. He had many siddhis, but he used them to purify us, who were lucky enough to be with him. He used them to remove karmas from us, to make our life, or our time which we still have to spend in this circle of death among 8.4 million living beings, shorter. He is there. He is not dead. He just left the mortal body. And he and Gurudev, Mahāprabhujī, and many other sons who are on this planet came here with only one aim: to help us, to help us who forgot why we came, who are lost in the physical world, to come out again. Out of it, out to divine reality, towards self-realization and God-realization. There is Guru Paramparā, which has very strict principles and rules, and a realized son will never work against it. So, such a great sense is within us, is with us, and it is great, great luck to be in their shadow, under their shelter, because when we are there, we don’t need to do anything, they will do everything for us. So thank you very much. I was talking quite too much. Wish you all the best once more. Greetings to all on this day, this great day when Holy Gurujī came to this planet, and I wish you all the best. Om Śānti Śānti...