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The Path of Practice: From Knowledge to Realization

Spiritual practice transforms knowledge into lived experience. Theoretical understanding remains incomplete without direct engagement. The guru often assigns tasks that seem irrelevant, yet they dismantle mental constructs and foster growth. Just as repetitive physical work loses its perceived difficulty through doing, our inner obstacles shrink when faced directly. Concentrating on the present step, not the entire mountain, allows progress. Regular practice, aided by constant remembrance through a mantra or image, facilitates unseen transformation. We hear the teachings repeatedly, but their power is realized only through application.

"The problem is, when are you all going to put it into practice?"

"The way to find out how simple it is, is just to get in there and do it."

Filming location: Jadan, Rajasthan, India

Siddhita Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya Bhāī. You are the one who has made my life miserable. You are the one who has made my life miserable. Lāk Chorā Sīme Jāvo, Tere Gurū Binā Kaun Sahā? Yā Bhāī Tum Jāgo, Terā Avasara Bitā Jā. Satguru śaraṇa sādhanā pyāre, Satguru śaraṇa sādhanā pyāre. Janama saphalā hojāya bhai, tum jāgo re. Terā janama saphalā hojāya bhai, tum jāgo re. Avasara bītā jāya bhai, tum jāgo re. Hātha kī pānsī meṁ kyoṁ makkadī jo mara jāya bhai. You will wake up. The spider that dies, you will wake up. Your time will pass. You will wake up. In this life, the precious diamond. In this life, the precious diamond. God bless you. Bhagavān Ādipāṇarāya Nāsrī, Bhagavān Ādipāṇarāya Chetāya Bhāī, tum jāgo re, Dīna Chetāya Bhāī, jāgo re, terā Arabī Jagtā hai, Hari Om to everybody around the world. Many greetings from everybody in Jhadan. Last night Premanānandajī was talking about Mahāprabhujī, and there is a mudrā with the finger. For those who were listening, who were lucky enough to be listening, it was very beautiful, but I don’t quite know how to follow that. Somebody just suggested before that since Premanāndajī talked about this finger, he should talk about the thumb. And also, when he was mentioning about having the picture in your pocket and looking at the picture every hour or every once in a while to remind yourself, it created an opening for somebody who is a computer programmer. If there’s anybody out there with that skill, about a week ago I was talking about one app which is on my phone, which every hour rings a bell, the awareness bell. I’d love to find somebody who could develop that app, so that every hour or so the phone would show Śrī Deep Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān or Mahāprabhujī’s picture, and we can keep remembering on and on. It also reminded me of the same finger. Somehow, Niranjan and Anjit Mahārāj also had a lot of photos taken with that same finger. Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Nirañjanānandajī had a few pictures with this Mudrā. If you remember, you have always seen him going like this: all is one. All in one, and one in all. So, definitely, as Premanandajī said, it is the most versatile finger, the most important. When Premanāndajī was talking about the fact that that picture changes its meaning as you look at it at different times, it reminds me also of the relationship that you have with your mantra over time. I find that depending on the inner state that is there—it depends on the inner state that we have inside. If you think about it, everyone has different mantras, but mine, at least, it can be related to me, or it can be related to the whole existence that’s around. It can be a prayer to Mahāprabhujī for inner transformation, or it can be a prayer to Mahāprabhujī to help us all, all together. Whatever is your mantra, to bring light to everybody, to remove the troubles from everybody, to remove the ignorance from everybody, the doubt or... At the same time, it can be just about what is inside you, and it can be an inside process at that moment. And for me, from my experience, that is changing, really, depending on the time, the year, how I am. And somehow, oscillating between the two. There may be times in our spiritual path where we really just need to pay attention to ourselves and take care of our inner journey. And other times, where it’s even better for our inner journey if we just give as much as we can to everybody else, if we let our energy flow out towards other people. And I guess over time, as you observe, you see that it’s changing in and out, and in and out, depending on the situation. Often, at those times you will see Swāmījī give you something to do which is the complete opposite of what you would like to be doing at that moment, what you think you should be doing at that moment. But afterwards, you look back and realize that it moves something, that you were stuck in some channel, and it lets you get out from that. I was reminded the other day of one movie I was watching as a child. And I find it a great story for India, for the kids in India, partially because they have never heard the story. A new movie was made of it the other two years ago. It’s the Karate Kid. But the original movie that was made, I think probably in the 80s, in the late 80s perhaps, is such a beautiful story of a relationship, a guru and disciple relationship. If you’ve seen it, you’ll recall that this boy goes to a Japanese master of karate and he offers to teach him karate. And then he says, "Yes, come, and we’ll start the training." And he spends the next month just washing the car, painting the fence, and sanding the wooden deck. If anyone remembers, "Wax on, wax off," polishing the car all the time, and it’s all leading towards this tournament which this boy has been entered in by his Gurujī. And the boy is getting more and more nervous about the fact that he is not at all preparing for a karate tournament. He is just cleaning the house, waxing the car, and painting the floor. And just as it’s coming close to the tournament, the boy gets so frustrated he starts objecting to the sādhanā which he’s got. And I guess it’s such a beautiful illustration of what happens to all of us when Swāmījī is working with us. When you really enter into the guru-disciple relationship and you come into seva, so many things happen which you just aren’t aware are part of that spiritual path. That seems to be things that are a waste of time or contrary to what you think should be done. But what do we know of what should be done when we haven’t been there? It was interesting during the celebration the other night of Gurujī’s Mahāsamādhi. We were watching the webcast from Nepal, Swamījī speaking, and he was talking about the difference between aparāvidyā and parāvidyā: that knowledge which comes just from books or from learning scientifically, and the knowledge which comes through realization and through the real experience of something. And in the evening, one Mahātmājī came here from Pali, one Mahenjī. He is a very renowned person in Pālī. He actually lives in Haridwar, but he is the mahant of eight ashrams, which have a Ganesh temple. They are known as Aṣṭasiddhi Vināyak Mandirs. So these eight temples each have a different aspect of Gaṇeśjī’s form or his tattva. And this Mahātma Jī, he actually only goes to those temples. He moves around in India to those temples, and he doesn’t generally visit anywhere else. And the bhaktas from Pali who were here were very excited about the fact that he wanted to come to the ashram, because he never actually goes out and visits anywhere. Swamiji had once invited him to come, and he said he wanted to come, but he wanted to come when Swamiji would be here. Swamiji wasn’t here, but we arranged with him that he would come when Swamiji was actually speaking on Skype, because he wanted to at least have darśan with Swamiji. And what was interesting is he was talking about basically the same thing as what Swāmījī was speaking about when we were watching the English webcast. And he was speaking specifically for the boys here from our hostel, telling also a lot of beautiful stories about the relationship between the Guru and the disciple. And he said also, you know, we are all repeating the same thing again and again. He was talking there about Swāmījī and himself, and when he is giving his satsaṅg. He said, "But the problem is, when are you all going to put it into practice?" Because when will that Aparāvidyā? Will you try and make it into Aparāvidyā? The practice has to be there to experience it. Today when we were walking around the ashram, I was looking at a few things on the way, especially in the Gośālā. And I was thinking back about when I was starting here to look after things in the Gośālā, and how difficult those things were. How every small thing seemed to be such a big work and gave me so much attention. The one that got me the most at that time was ordering food for the cows. Especially in the drought time, you have to order the food from outside, the grass. And first is to find people who are selling it, and then to look at the quality, and then the price, and then to get it here, and then to unload it. And all of those things, when I was first doing it, they would cause me tension for two or three days. It was dominating my thought: how do I manage to get this grass and get it here? The rate might be wrong, and this quality might not be good. Calling somebody and then worrying they’re not calling back, and calling again and again. And you do that for some time, and do it again and again, and it somehow becomes such an ordinary thing to do. Nowadays, it’s like two or three phone calls, and okay, then you wait one day and somebody will call back, and then slowly you get the rates, and they’ll bring the sample, and the quality is there. What seemed at that time like such a difficult thing to do is actually so simple. And the way to find out how simple it is, is just to get in there and do it. And then it somehow loses its enormity and its difficulty. And the same is when we have these big functions here in the ashram. I can remember earlier, getting in such tension a week in advance, starting to think, "We have to organize this and this and... this." There are three or four thousand people coming to eat, and we need to have this wood, and we must organize this and tell somebody that. And it really was for a week before building up this tension: "How will we manage? How will we manage?" I can remember realizing how much that changes when you do things regularly. It was last year. Just last year, when the day before, either it was Guru Pūrṇimā or Gurujī’s Mahāsamādhi, which is in the past when we would already be organizing everything here and there and already been tense for a week, I can remember sitting with Premanānandajī and saying, I think we better start to organize this function now. It’s tomorrow. And it works just the same. It got organized. There was no difference whether the tension was there or not. It wasn’t a tension that was from that actual event; it was just coming from inside. But only when you get into it, and you have done it, and you experience it, do you realize that it’s not as big a problem as it was. And I think for me, those sorts of things are such a good example of when we look at our spiritual path and think that it’s too big, that we have issues that are too big to get around, that there are some qualities of our self that we just can’t deal with. When you turn around, face them, and deal with them just day by day or in this present moment, the enormity of that whole task becomes much smaller when you’re just looking at what’s in front. And when you engage in that and you deal with it for some time, you realize it’s not as big a deal as it was before. And that a lot of the tension that you had about that issue was about just not dealing with it, rather than the issue itself. I remember when I was in Slovenia this year. And I somehow got tricked into going up the mountain. And I’ve always been very scared of heights. And if I hadn’t had a lot of time to think, I probably wouldn’t have gone up the mountain, although nobody else would have been scared by it. But somehow, on the way, I was just so much concentrating on taking each step and putting the foot on the right place. But when we were up on the ridge, I was looking down and thinking, how on earth did I end up here? And the same again when we are practicing. If we just look at what we are doing now and be aware of how we are dealing with the things that are there in front of us today, and as Premanānandajī suggested yesterday, have something like a reference, like that picture of Mahāprabhujī, to remind you again and again of what you are practicing or how your inner state is, then things somehow transform and change without you even realizing that things are happening. When you come into a situation, like coming to Jhadan or coming to some ashram, and you spend time there, you don’t realize at the time the transformation that’s taking place. It’s something that you look back on later, and you realize that something happened. So I think what that Mahātma Jī said is that again and again we hear the practice, we hear from Swāmījī what is our practice, our mantra, the sādhanā. But we need to keep reminding ourselves again and again that it’s not just something to listen to and think is nice, but to put into practice for ourselves. The theory is beautiful, but to bring a new life to it by putting it into your own heart and into your own practice is something even more beautiful. Oṁ bole śrī-dīpa-nārāyaṇa-bhagavāna kī ca śrī-śrī-deva-pudīśya-mahādeva kī ca dharma-samrāṭa-paramahaṁta śrī-svayī-mādhavanāṁ-puljī-mahārāja kī ca viśva-guru-mahāmaṇḍaleśvara-paramahaṁta śrī-svayī-maheśvaranāṁ-puljī-sat-gurudeva kī ca. Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Śrī Jasrāj Puljī Mahārāja kī jaya.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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