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Siddhita Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya Bhāī. 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 in the palm of your hand, you will wake up. Your time is passing. You will wake up. 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, Svāmī Mādhāvanandjī Yugāvatā hai. Hari Om to everybody around the world. Many greetings from everybody in Jhadan. Last night, Premanānjī 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 that since Premanājī talked about this finger, he should talk about the thumb. Also, when he was mentioning having the picture in your pocket and looking at it every hour or so to remind yourself, it created an opening for a computer programmer. If there's anybody with that skill, about a week ago I was talking about an app on my phone that every hour rings a bell—the awareness bell. I'd love to find somebody who could develop an app where every hour or so the phone would show Śrī Deep Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān or Mahāprabhujī's picture, so we can keep remembering. It also reminded me of the same finger. Somehow, Niranjan and Anjit Mahārāj also had many 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 Premanājī was talking about the fact that a picture changes its meaning as you look at it at different times, it reminded me also of the relationship you have with your mantra over time. I find that depending on the inner state that is there, the situation that is around, the mantra can mean something you need to change inside, or something you can offer outwardly to the world. If you think about it, everyone has different mantras, but mine, at least, can be related to me, or it can be related to the whole existence around. It can be a prayer to Mahāprabhujī for inner transformation, or a prayer to Mahāprabhujī to help us all together—whatever your mantra is—to bring light to everybody, to remove troubles from everybody, to remove ignorance from everybody, the doubt or... At the same time, it can be just about what is inside you, an inner process at that moment. From my experience, that is changing, really, depending on the time, the year, how I am, 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. Over time, as you observe, you see that it's changing in and out, and in and out, depending on the situation. V průběhu času se to mění, je to ven a dovnitř, a ven a dovnitř. You will also notice that Swāmījī, when he is working with us—when the process inside us gets stuck, whether we get stuck inside or we get stuck somewhere outside—at those times you will see Swamiji 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. 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 a movie I watched as a child. 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 a couple of years ago: The Karate Kid. But the original movie, made probably in the 80s, is such a beautiful story of a guru-disciple relationship. If you've seen it, you'll recall that a boy goes to a Japanese master of karate and offers to learn. The master says, "Yes, come, and we'll start the training." 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. The boy has been entered into a tournament by his Gurujī, and he gets more and more nervous that he is not preparing for it at all; he is just cleaning the house, waxing the car, and painting the floor. Just as the tournament approaches, the boy gets so frustrated he starts objecting to the sādhanā he has been given. A když už je to velmi blízko k tomu turnaji, tak on si stěžuje mistrovi na tu sādhanu, kterou dostal. The master then shows him that all the movements he learned during these tasks were, in fact, training for the tournament, without him even realizing it. It is such a beautiful illustration of what happens to all of us when Swāmījī is working with us. When you truly enter the guru-disciple relationship and come into seva, so many things happen which you aren't aware are part of the spiritual path. They seem to be 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, with Swamījī speaking about the difference between aparāvidyā and parāvidyā—the knowledge that comes from books or scientific learning, and the knowledge that comes through realization and direct experience. In the evening, a Mahātmājī came here from Pali, one Mahenjī. He is a very renowned person in Pālī; he lives in Haridwar but is the mahant of eight ashrams with Ganesh temples, known as Aṣṭasiddhi Vināyak Mandirs. Each temple has a different aspect of Gaṇeśjī's form or his tattva. This Mahātma Jī only goes to those temples, moving around India, and doesn't generally visit anywhere else. The bhaktas from Pali were very excited he wanted to come to the ashram, as he never goes out to visit. Swamiji had once invited him, and he said he wanted to come when Swamiji was here. Swamiji wasn't here, but we arranged for him to come while Swamiji was speaking on Skype, as he wanted at least to have darśan. Interestingly, he was talking about essentially the same thing Swāmījī was speaking about in the webcast. He was speaking specifically to the boys from our hostel, telling beautiful stories about the Guru-disciple relationship. He said, "We are all repeating the same thing again and again." He was talking about Swāmījī and himself when giving satsaṅg. He said, "But the problem is, when are you all going to put it into practice? When will that Aparāvidyā become Parāvidyā? The practice has to be there to experience it." Today, walking around the ashram, especially in the Gośālā, I thought back to when I started looking after things there and how difficult everything seemed. Every small thing was a big task and consumed so much attention. What troubled me most then was ordering food for the cows, especially during drought—ordering grass from outside. First, finding sellers, then checking quality and price, getting it here, and unloading it. When I first did it, these tasks would cause tension for two or three days, dominating my thoughts: how to manage, get the grass here, worry about wrong rates or poor quality, calling people and worrying if they didn't call back. You do that for some time, again and again, and it somehow becomes ordinary. Nowadays, it's two or three phone calls; you wait a day for a callback, get the rates, they bring a sample, the quality is there. What seemed so difficult then is actually simple. The way to discover its simplicity is just to get in there and do it. Then it loses its enormity and difficulty. The same applies to big functions here in the ashram. I remember earlier, getting so tense a week in advance, thinking, "We have to organize this and that," with three or four thousand people coming to eat, needing wood, telling people what to do. For a week, tension would build: "How will we manage?" I realized how much that changes when you do things regularly. Last year, the day before Guru Pūrṇimā or Gurujī's Mahāsamādhi—occasions when we would have been organizing and tense for a week—I remember sitting with Premanānjī and saying, "I think we better start to organize this function now. It's tomorrow." And it worked just the same. It got organized. There was no difference whether the tension was there or not. The tension wasn't from the event; it came from inside. Only when you get into it, do it, and experience it do you realize it's not as big a problem as it seemed. For me, such things are a good example of when we look at our spiritual path and think it's too big, that we have issues too big to get around, qualities of ourselves we just can't deal with. When you turn around, face them, and deal with them day by day or in the present moment, the enormity of the whole task becomes much smaller when you're just looking at what's in front. When you engage with it and deal with it for some time, you realize it's not as big a deal as before. A lot of the tension about that issue was from not dealing with it, rather than the issue itself. I remember being in Slovenia this year. I somehow got tricked into going up a mountain. I've always been very scared of heights. If I'd had a lot of time to think, I probably wouldn't have gone, though nobody else would have been scared. On the way, I was so concentrated on taking each step, putting my foot in the right place. But when we were up on the ridge, I looked down and thought, how on earth did I end up here? It's the same with our practice. If we just look at what we are doing now and be aware of how we are dealing with the things in front of us today, and as Premanānjī suggested yesterday, have a reference—like that picture of Mahāprabhujī—to remind you again and again of what you are practicing or your inner state, then things somehow transform and change without you even realizing it. When you come into a situation, like coming to Jadam or an ashram, and spend time there, you don't realize the transformation taking place at the time. You look back later and realize something happened. So, I think what that Mahātma Jī said is that again and again we hear the practice, we hear from Swāmījī what our practice, mantra, and sādhanā are. But we need to keep reminding ourselves that it's not just something to listen to and think is nice, but to put into practice ourselves. The theory is beautiful, but to bring new life to it by putting it into your own heart and 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.