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Sattva guru chali salika nipala nagara prama, śrī pūjā saya badhi pakari, sattva guru paramadaya, śrī mādhava nanda namdabaya, palame kiyaniha. Nāgara nipalme nārāyaṇa, gaṅga nādhiketi darśana-se dukha-durabhāge nirmala-khoya-śāri. Śrī Narmadā Bhagavān kī jai. Vāyagurujī, merā amara jarile. Prabhujī, merā amara jarile. Dhanyagārī, dhanabhāgāḥ, amara chara no me śīṣa na vāyā. Dānyā gārī, dāna bhāgāḥ, māra chara no me śīṣa na vāyā. Sata gurujārī pilāyī, mujaḥ ko. Sata gurujārī pilāyī, mujaḥ ko. If you don’t come, Gurujī, my Ammā has brought me to the Jārī. I have come to the Jari, I have come to the Jari, I have come to the Jari, I have come to the Jari, I have come to the Jari, I have come to the Jari, I have come to the Jari. Prabhujī, merā amara jarī larsāyā. Dhalokai kiso brahmānanda muja mehi larsaya, jari se baya sanjīvana. Esi jari se baya sanjīvana, Dayā sukha paya. Gurujī mera amara jari le aaya, dharmāhe tuyāvatāra dharahar nitaka jīva jīvaya. Gurujī mera amara jari le aaya. Dayālo, mera amara jārī lagyā binā mile nahī darśana, manuṣya loka me bāyā. Yajña binā mile nahī darśana, manuṣya loka me bāyā. Bandanā senir bandanā kinā? Bandanā senir bandanā kinā? Mukta banāyā Gurujī, mera amara jārīle. Āyālo, mera amara jārīle. Dharma he tuya avatāra dara har, Dharma he tuya avatāra dara har. Sattva Guru Sāheb, Śrīdeva Purīṣām, Eta Sadā Nirdayām. Sata guru sāyāsi deva purīṣa ehta sadā niradāyā śrī svāmī dīpa śaraṇa sata gurukhi śrī svāmī dīpa śaraṇa sata gurukhi. Dina dina noor savaaya, Guruji mera amara jaliyaya, dayalu mera amara jareela avatara dara har mahetu, avatara dara har jeeva jeeva aaya. Guruji mera amara jari le aaya. Dayālu Merā Amara Jarī Jai Jai Śrī Swāmī Jī Maheśwāmī Jī Gurū Deva Kī Jai Ambūlī Śrī Bholenāth Śaṅkar Bhagavān Kī Jai Himālayan Siddha Avatārsī Alak Puruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jai Devādidevaśī Deveśwar Mahādeva Kī Jai Namaḥ Śivāya, Namaḥ Śivāya, Hara Hara Bhule Namah Śivāya, Namah Śivāya,... Namah Śivāya, Namah Śivāya,... Namah Śivāya. Hara hara bole, namaḥ śivāya, namaḥ śivāya... Hara hara bole, namaḥ śivāya. Śrī Śiva pañcākṣara stotram: Nāgendrahārai trilochanāya, vasmāṅgarāgai maheśvarāya, nityaśuddhāya digambarāya, tasmai nakārāya namaḥ śivāya. Tasmai nakārāya namaḥ śivāya. Mandākini salila candana carcita, nandīśvara pramathanātha maheśvarāya, mandāra puṣpa bahu puṣpa supūjitāya, tasmai makārāya namaḥ śivāya. Tasmai śikarāya namaḥ śivāya śivāya gaurī-vadanaṁ javarindah Sūryāya dakṣānta varāṇāśakāya Śrī nīlakaṇṭhāya vṛṣaṭ vajāya Tasmai śikarāya namaḥ śivāya Tasmai śikarāya namaḥ śivāya Vasiṣṭha kumbhodbhava gautamārya Munīndradevarā citta-śekharāya Candra-arka-veśvānara-locanāya Tasmai vakarāya namaḥ śivāya Tasmai vākarāya namaḥ śivāya yakṣasvarūpāya jaṭādharāya. Pena kaha sthāya sanātanāya devīyāyadevāyade gamba rāya. Tasmaiyakā rāya namaḥ śivāya. Tasmaiyakā rāya namaḥ śivāya... Praṇām to Lord Śiva, praṇām to our Guru Lineage, praṇām Aṣṭa Śiva, praṇām Aṣṭa Śiva. Dear Guru brothers and sisters, this was the Namaḥ Śivāya Mantra. In a very simple translation, it means prostration to Lord Śiva. Namah means I prostrate, I worship, and Śivāya is the name of the great lord, the great god. The Sanskrit hymn which was sung after that is called the Pañcākṣarastotram because it describes the meaning of the mantra namaḥ śivāya. This mantra consists of five syllables: na, ma, śi, vā, ya. It is called the mūla mantra of Lord Śiva, or the root mantra. Every one of these syllables represents Lord Śiva himself in his different aspects. There is a deep symbolism, and this is what is described in this stotra which was sung. The stotra was explaining the meaning of this mantra. It is similar to our morning Śiva āratī. It describes the many divine qualities of the Lord, of Lord Śiva. Plus, it’s related to each and every one of these syllables. For example, it stands for the five elements. Na is the pṛthvī, or earth. Ma is the jal, it means water. Śi is agni, fire. Vā is vāyu, the air. And ya is the ākāśa, the ether. What it actually describes is the principle of the work of Śiva in the world. It brings each and every soul to this mortal world. And when the soul realizes that the proper way is to direct life towards Lord Śiva, then such a soul is uplifted to the Śiva Loka. So through this very mantra, it is possible to realize God, to realize Lord Śiva. The subject I would like to talk about is Śiva Pūjā. It was a few weeks ago when Swamiji was still present in the ashram, and one evening he gave a duty to our senior students of the Gurukul to speak about their experiences and studies, what they have learned in the Gurukul till present. Many of my respected sisters and brothers were speaking, and you could see it was a beautiful mosaic of very rich contributions. Only a few of them spoke, but for every one of us it was an inquiry: what have we learned in the ashram? When I realized for myself, it is such a vast volume of what I could learn in the ashram. In another phase of my previous life, before coming to Jhadan, I learned so much, as here in the ashram. Some of the teachings just got deepened or widened, and some were completely new. One of them for me is pūjā. This is something that I discovered only here in Jhadan. Of course, as a part of our morning prayer and evening prayer, the short version of Pūjā, I was practicing every morning and evening before coming to India. At that time, I was still not understanding that inner meaning. It was just that I trusted the system, and so I was doing as others were doing. But here, after coming to Jhadan, it opened. I was several times privileged to do the pūjārī sevā in our Śiva Mandir for long, long periods of time. And that is the experience I would like to share. Just imagine what such a Pūjārī is doing there. The person who is doing the pūjā, what is he doing there in the mandir? He is, we can say, even running in the mandir from mūrti to mūrti, from picture to picture. Offering flowers, water, agarbatī, jyoti, prasāda. Singing the āratī, singing the Sanskrit ślokas. If we sum it up, then your legs are involved, your hands are involved, your mouth is involved, so are your eyes, ears, and the sense of smelling. The mind is recalling the ślokas from memory, the intellect is watching if the protocol is somehow fulfilled, and the heart is listening to God. So actually, there is not a single part which is left; everything, everything that you have physically in this world is involved in the worship of the Lord. And the result of that is an instant spiritual experience. This is why I said that I was privileged, because it’s not a question of any social status. It’s the question of that you get such a prasāda, spiritual prasāda. I was thinking how to explain it, how to share it. I was trying to remember some Swāmījī satsaṅgs, and I looked at some internet pages and some books from Swami Sivananda or Śivaya Sadguru, Subrahmaṇiya Swami, and others. What I found, I would like to share in a very simple way. First comes the question: what is it, pūjā, and why is there pūjā? Every human being is born with a spiritual aim. If we did not have a spiritual aim, we would be born as animals. But we came to this life with a certain purpose: to do spiritual progress. Somehow, due to the māyā, we forget about this the moment we are born. And so we are searching first in the world. Our happiness, we try to find and grab in the world. But sooner or later we find out that in the world there is no permanent happiness. And our body and mind complex, with which we identify, just brings us suffering. The body is subject to decay. It’s just decomposing slowly, slowly, getting illnesses, and finally one day it will finish in the dust. And our mind, every time, up and down. So the solution is to search for something permanent, to search for God. But now, how to do it? What is God? Where is He? How does He look? Where does the perhaps most authorized scripture on spirituality say that we don’t need to search for God outside? Because he is within every one of us; he is in our heart. Okay, so God is here now. How does he look? Look inside. Can you see him? That’s the problem. Vedanta says that the true form or true nature of God is without form, is formless. So, how can we search for something which does not look in any way? So how can they find something that does not have a form of realization? This is a difficult task. There is another difficulty. According to Vedānta, yes, God is inside in the form of the soul, but we cannot see it because of our ignorance. Ignorance is like a thick layer of dust on a mirror. Through many, many lives, we were just collecting the dust, collecting the dust, and now we cannot see ourselves in the mirror. So, we don’t know what to search for, and even if we know, it’s not visible because it’s dusted. But still we are hungry for God, so what to do? We call to God, "God, please appear. Where are you? Show yourself. Show thyself." And so, God is very merciful with His devotees. And he takes upon himself many forms, and he’s coming to this mortal world to us. He incarnated as the nimit avatars, like Lord Kṛṣṇa, Lord Rāma, and nitya avatars, all the saints, our Gurudev, and so on. He takes various forms, comes as a prophet, or in the messages of certain people, or in dreams he appears as goddesses, and so on. So we are getting hundreds and thousands and ten thousands of forms of God, which we can worship. And it doesn’t matter whichever form it is; it works. Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad Gītā, in whichever form a devotee worships me, I do accept it. So when we worship God, what is it actually? What is puja? The essence is that we offer our attention. It doesn’t matter if you bring flowers to the Lord, you sing some praise of Him, or you bow down to Him in your heart, he is offering your attention to the Lord. As per that, we recognize the kāyik pūjā; this is from the word kāya, the body. It is when we simply come to the mandir, we come to the temple; we have to use our body to come there. We bow down; this is through the body. We give flowers, agarbatī, fruits, cloth. Next is the Vācik Pūjā, which is superior to the Kāyik, and that is through the vācā, the words. It means we either speak to God, or we recite to Him some hymns; we sing stotras, we read the Rāmāyaṇa, Bhagavatam, and so on. And the most superior is the Mānasik Pūjā, that which is internal. When within our mind we offer to the Lord whatever we can, whether it is an object of this world or we offer Him our pure love, this is the highest. So whichever idol, whichever symbol the devotee takes, it works as the medium of our connection with God. If we stand in front of the Lord’s picture or sculpture, do not think that there are some dead objects, that it is just a 2D or 3D object, that’s all. No, they are the true manifestation of God in the physical form. Through that, we communicate with the Lord. The Lord is present inside, and He is listening to what we are speaking. He is listening and He is replying. He can feel what our feelings are, what our thoughts are, what we are thinking. We can imagine it’s like we are here in India, and we want to call somebody in America. So we pick up the phone, dial, and if we dial the proper number, then the person is there. If somebody were watching from outside, he would say, "Ah, that person is speaking to an instrument." But we do not speak to the instrument, we speak to that person who is 6,000–7,000 kilometers away. And the same is the picture of the Lord, or the Mūrti, or the Śivaliṅgam. This is the instrument. And the Lord is inside, and He is listening. So whichever way we take it, whichever spiritual way or religious way we take it, the worshipping pūjā is helping us very much. Every such symbol is related to deep meanings. And as we connect ourselves, as we relate ourselves to that symbol, then the qualities of that, these divine qualities, they are coming on us; we are receiving them. If we know the meaning, the connection is stronger, and the interchange of the data is stronger. If we know the real meaning of things, then the connection will be stronger, and the data flow will be faster. But if not, still it works. Still, it works; the transfer is working both sides. Because these divine qualities are written inside as some sort of hologram. It’s the same principle as our prayers, our morning and evening prayer, which is mainly singing the Guru Mahimā. It is praising the Gurudev, what are his divine qualities? And as we are singing that, whether we understand the meaning or not, in any case, these qualities are coming through that channel to us also. This is the way prayer is purifying and making us more and more divine. This is the way how, during the worship, the divine qualities of these mūrtis, of these idols, are coming into us. As I wanted to speak about Śiva Pūjā, this is a very vast, vast subject. Because the worship of Śiva is, as per known data, the oldest existing religion in the world. It dates approximately 8,000 years backward. So there are many, many forms of how to worship Lord Śiva. And this way of worshipping Lord Śiva is called Śaivism. And it’s one of the strongest parts of Hinduism. And it’s also very much related to yoga and to sannyāsa. Lord Shiva is often synonymized as the Merciful One. He is the pure consciousness from which all this created world was created. And he has many forms. One of them is the so-called Rudra form. This is what we call the destroyer. When we hear this for the first time, often we get afraid. The God destroyer, what is he going to do to me? Is he going to destroy me? But we should understand that he is not as much a destroyer as a regenerator. Because he is here in order to uplift his devotees. And for that purpose, he destroys all the negative qualities, bad habits, which are in those who are worshipping him. So that something new and positive, something divine can come up. The Śiva worship is, we can say, eternal. And also for the Shaivites, it consists of many daily duties, many daily worships. At certain occasions, it is more intensified, like within a week, the most auspicious day to worship Lord Śiva is Monday. Within a month, it is the thirteenth day of the moon cycle. This is what sometimes you can see in the calendar, it’s written Śiva Pradoṣa. It implies both the thirteenth days after Amavasya and after Pūrṇimā. Within a year, it is the month Śrāvaṇa, which comes between the Pūrṇimās of the Guru Pūrṇimā and the Rakṣā Bandhan. And then throughout the year, there are many, there are approximately ten big, big Śiva festivals all around the year. Or, let’s say, the festivals which are related directly to the Śiva family. For us, perhaps the most known is Śivarātri, which we know as the very happy fasting and not sleeping. The pillars of Śiva worship are the sādgurus, the scriptures and the temples. The sadgurus are those who are bringing the message of the teaching of Lord Śiva to us. Many of their teachings are written in the scriptures, like the Śiva Purāṇa, the Śiva Saṁhitā, and many others. And mostly, people are practicing Śiva worship in the Śiva temples, in Śiva maṇḍirs. My intention was to invite you for a visit to the Śiva Temple, our Śiva Mandir in the Jhadan Ashram, and try to explain a little bit about the symbolism of the mūrtis and pictures and so on. But time is running very quickly. So perhaps we can leave it for the next time, this part, to make an excursion to the Jadān Śiv Mandir. And just to praise Lord Śiva, we can sing some Devpurījī’s bhajan. Jai Jai Śrī Devāśvaramahādeva. Hari Purujīs, can you play? Om Ule Srideep Narayan Bhagwan Ki Chaya Srisi Deve Svar Mahadeva Ki Chaya Jai Jai Sri Deve Svar Mahadeva Har Har Sri Deve Svar Mahadeva Deshavideshase Aaveyatri, Kare Aapki Sehe,... Jai Jai Śrī Devaśvara Mahādev, Har Har Śrī Devaśvara Mahādev, Śuddhāman sedyāve, Sābha kucā pāve, Mānā icchā pālāle.... Dukhiya janoko sukhi kareh, Eh sadā yalu deh,... Jai Jai Śrī Devaśvara Mahādeva! Har Har Śrī Devaśvara Mahādeva! Deshavī Deśase Āve Yātrī, Kare Āpa Kise... Jai Jai Śrī Devaśvara Mahādev, Har Har Śrī Devaśvara Mahādev, Nipoko Putra Diyah Nirdhani Oko Dhanadev... Jeevanadana diyamṛta-kokho, Esa Allah kā abhāhe... Jai Jai Shri Deve Shvar Mahādev, Har Har Shri Deve Shvar Mahādev, Desha Videsha Se Āve Yātrī, Kare Āp Kise, Desha Videsha Se Āve Yātrī, Kare Āp Kise, Jai Jai Shri Deve Shvar Mahādev, Har Har Shri Deve Shvar Mahādev, Kelāṣā Purī Me Āsanā Unkā, Vahā Re Āśīrvād. Jñāna lagavato bharṣaṇa pavāḥ Devanāḥ sapalakālaḥ. Jñāna lagavato dharṣaṇa pavāḥ Devanāḥ sapalakālaḥ. Jai Jai Śrī Deve Śvaramahāde. Har Har Śrī Deve Śvaramahāde. Deśa videśa se āve yātrī, Kare āp kī sehe,... Jai Jai Śrī Devaśvara Mahādeva, Haram Devaśvara Mahādeva, Orī Pūjā Se Karjaḍādeva, Bolā Bandarire, Orī Pūjā Se Paljaḍādeva, Bolā Bandarire, Koī bhī nirāśraha nahīṁ dukhī āve, Asā purīkarehe,... Jai Jai Śrī Devaśvara Mahādeva! Har Har Śrī Devaśvara Mahādeva! Deśhavideśase Āveyatrī Kare Āpokiseh, Deśhavideśase Āveyatrī Kare Āpokiseh. Jai Jai Śrī Deveśwar Mahādev! Har Har Śrī Deveśwar Mahādev! Sere puja bhagavana dipa narayana Sathya vachanamoyeke Śrīmādāvānanda-pāramehārabhāi, Jabhagayāsātya-sānehe,... Jai Jai Shri Devāśvara Mahādev, Har Har Shri Devāśvara Mahādev. Om Bodhi Shri Dev Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Chāyā, Shri Devāśvara Mahādeva Kī Chāyā, Hindu Dharma Samrāṭ Sadguru Swāmī Shri Madhavānand Purī Mahārāj Kī Chāyā, Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramān Swāmī. Shrī Maheśvarānand Purī Gurudeva Kī Chāyā Mahāmaṇḍala Īśvara Svāmī Shrī Jasrāj Pūjya Mahārāj Kī