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On Tuesday, Children's Day is approaching. I am not sure if it is International Children's Day or India's Children's Day, but I suspect it is the international observance. At the school, we will have many activities—painting, dancing, acting, Rangoli, and more—where children can display their skills. Even though we are on a webcast, I invite everyone here to come and have a look on Tuesday, to see what they will do and how they will express what is inside them. Recently, in a lecture somewhere, a comment was made that stuck in my ear and has been going round and round. It was about the notion that the modern generation is not spiritual; they are only interested in money. I do not agree with this at all. They may not express spirituality in the same way our generation does, or the generation of our parents. They may not go to church or adhere to formal religion. But from my experience of travelling—in Australia and Europe—the young people I met, if you look at spirituality as the qualities of compassion, caring for others, and understanding, then I feel they perhaps have it better than our generation. We just do not hear it or see it as that spirituality. Perhaps that is something we need to pay attention to and nurture in that generation. The world is changing so quickly, and technology changes so quickly. It is a completely different world from when I was in my teens. Naturally, the expressions of these inner qualities will be very different. We have to adjust. I say this because I sometimes fear that we squash the real spirituality in children by trying to mould them into what we think it should be or what the traditional practice was. They may take on the essence of that traditional practice, but they will express it in a different way. For me, that has always been the beauty of yoga and the Indian tradition: it has always transformed. Look over time: the concentration on the Vedas, then the periods of bhakti, the time of Śaṅkarācāryajī—things changed very much. All these different evolutions show how the same essence, the same Vedic knowledge, is practiced. The way it is applied in society has always changed. What will be the way it is applied in the next twenty years? Who knows? We will see. But I feel, for us, it is important to be aware and not to throw things out just because they are different from what we think they should be. I had a beautiful experience in the last few days, having Ālātāpurī stay with me in my room because he is sick. Yes, Tufiāpurī goes, "Oh my God." It is not always easy to have someone with such energy staying in the room all the time. But one beautiful thing I have been observing is just how hopeless I am at listening. You come to somebody and ask a question, and I am listening to my own mind. I already know what I think the answer should be. What chance is there, then, for the expression from the other side to come? I am not listening. I am half-listening with one ear, and the rest is what I think it should be, thinking, "No, that's wrong." What am I going to learn from that? Where am I open to hear the other side of the story? How beautiful it can be when someone is actually listening to you. How can we work on that in ourselves? This sparked from there. I then went into the school and started looking at all the things that were not going well or were wrong, that were not functioning properly. Of course, my mind immediately started going, "We should do this and this," and I would tell them to do that. Then I thought, hang on—something from back in the room—let's listen for a moment. I went around and started to ask the people who were there vague questions about what was going on and what they thought. Such fantastic answers came, and such practical suggestions about how to change things for the better. All those things, when I go with my own preconceived idea of what should be, you miss completely. The ears are closed and the mouth is open, just saying, "Let's do this," and "You should do that," and "That's not clean." I learned so much yesterday about the difficulties of cleaning the classrooms. We worked out many things about how to change it to make it easier. There was one classroom, a small class—the eleventh commerce class. There are not many students in this period, about fifteen. They have a very small room, and there were about forty chairs in it. The lady doing the cleaning said, "The problem is here; I spend so much time moving chairs. I don't know why." I asked, "Why are there so many chairs?" She said, "I don't know." I asked, "How many children sit here?" She said, "Only fifteen." Who said to put the chairs? Nobody knew. We got the chairs out, and her job became so much easier. That came from her being able to say what the problem was. Thanks to that little experience of thinking about listening in my room, otherwise I would have gone there and said, "You should just sweep faster." Just move chairs faster? Forty chairs take time to move. Listening to each other—not just to the words that come out of our mouths, but to the feeling and the need behind it. Often we are not very good at expressing what we really want to say. Trying to listen with compassion towards the other person's inner need and not to judge it—I think you all know that experience. When you go to Swāmījī with a problem and talk and talk to him about it, he then changes the topic and does not give an answer at all. But your problem has been solved. You go away later and think, "Hey, it's gone. Where was that problem?" He listened, and actually, you gave the answer yourself somewhere along the line, and it was gone. How beautifully he can listen. In the moment when he is there, he changes the topic. You think, hang on, where's my answer? But he already got it. He did not need to give it because we have it inside. I cannot remember which president it was, but I read once that a president of America used to let everybody who wanted to come and talk to him directly do so. This was a hundred years ago. His secretary, who had also worked for the previous president who did not allow that, said, "I don't understand. How do you have so much time? The previous president used to meet ten or fifteen people in a day, and it would go all day. He did not have time for anything else. You meet a hundred people in the same amount of time, and all the things are settled. How is it possible?" The president said, "Oh, I don't talk. That's it." He listened. Beautiful. Not easy, of course, but beautiful. In the same way, can we listen to ourselves? Listen to what our real needs are—not just our spiritual need, but our physical need, our need when it comes to food, our need in our work. Often we can be so tough on ourselves and so unrealistic in our expectations: how disciplined we should be, how much sādhanā we should do, how much we should work. It is not meant to encourage laziness, but to be realistic and to have that compassion towards yourself to listen to your needs. Probably the time we most hopelessly fail to listen to ourselves is when we are sick. What is a sickness? In one way, when we get a fever or a cold, it is a call from our body to say, "Hang on, slow down. Slow down for a little while. Have a rest. Let me recover. Let this illness process within." But what do we do? We take—especially in India, though I hope as yogīs we are a bit better—tablets to cover the fever, tablets so the nose stops running and the headache is gone, and we go on. Where is that nurturing and compassion towards our body at that point? Sometimes you have to go on because of obligations, but I would say it is a modern illness that we try to ignore those calls from our body and from inside to sometimes take it slower or let that rehabilitation take place. It is a scary habit here. I think Niranjan Purjī will know it very well. In the summertime, people doing labour work get dehydrated or ill, and the next day they come, and it is almost like a trophy. They say, "I went to the hospital and got two bottles in the drip." They get a fever, and immediately it is a drip with injections, and in the morning they run again. For me, that is constantly a very scary thing. A fever means there is something inside that should come out; your body is trying to sweat it out and throw it out. Every time we take medicine to stop that fever, we close that illness inside. It has to come back sometime. We ignore the very special and practical solution our body has to that problem and do not let it run. It is not even a thought here, from what I observe locally. They go straight to the hospital. I have heard doctors say that if they do not give a drip, people are angry; they are not satisfied. That is not a proper treatment. I am not criticising the local people. This is a thing all around the world; we pop pills. But these bodily processes are sometimes for a good purpose. As much as possible, we should let it run. We can still keep a certain comfort, but we should try to let that fever run. If it is dangerous, of course we take medicine. But to a certain point, we should try to get that illness which is inside, out. Hear that message from our body. All I wanted to say today is that I am just thinking about listening—and here I am just talking. But to listen to each other, to listen to the children around us (they have a lot of wisdom to give in their own special way), to listen to our hearts, to listen to what is inside, and, of course, to listen to Gurujī. It is the same when we listen to Gurujī. Maybe you have not had the same experience, but before he has finished the sentence, I have thought of ten reasons why you should not do this, and I already have the list here. But there is one beautiful saying: don't stick your butt in my face. Śrī Dīpanārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Dev Puruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jai, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Maravananpur Jī Mahārāj Kī Jai, Viśva Guru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānandpur Jī Satguru Dev Kī Jai. God bless you all. Kurujī, merā āmada jārī le āyā. Dhanyāgādī, bhāgyadhā bhāgah marā cāriṇo me śi śanivāyā. Dhanyāgādī, dhanyabhāgamara cāriṇo meśi sanābhāyā. Satguru jārī pilāyī mujhago. Satguru jārī pilāyī mujhago. Oṁ rom rom. Karanaya Guruji, mera amal jari le aaya. Prabhuji, mera amal jari le aaya. Oh dharma hai tu, avatāra dharāri vṛttaka jī, vo jīvāya guruji, mera amala jāri le aaya. Chauda loka ikiso brahmānanda, mujhame hīda rasāyana. Dayalo mera amvada jari le aaya. vajiv vajiv aaya. Guruji mera amal jari le aaya. Prabhujī, mera amal jārī le āyā. Vāgya-vīnāya na hī mile darśana manuṣa-loka-mī. Bāyā Paṇḍana se nirabandhana kī, na jīvan-mukta banāyā. Gurujī, mera amda jārī le āyā. Dharmahe tū avatāra dharārī. Mṛttak jīva jīvāya gurujī, mera amda jārī le āyā prabhujī, mera amda jārī le āyā. Satguru Sāī Apshī Deva Purīṣa rehtā sadā niradayam, jñānī guru Sāī Apshī Deva Purīṣa rehtā sadā niradayam. Śrī Svāmī Dīpa śaraṇa sattva gurū kī. Dinna Dinna Noor Savaiya Kuru Jī, Mera Amda Jadi Le Āyā Prabhu Jī, Mera Amda Jadi Le Āyā. Tāra Māhetu Avatāra Dhararī, Vritta Kadhi Vajivāya Gurujī, Mera Amadha Jadile Āyā Dayālo, Mera Amadha Jadile Āyā. God bless you, God bless you,... God bless you.