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Śrīdīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān kī jaya, Śrī Śrīdheśvara Mahādeva kī jaya, Śrī Mārav Kṛṣṇa Bhagavān kī jaya, Viśva Gurumāmanliswa Paramāṁśwarī Maheśvarānanda Purījya Mahārāja kī jaya. Bless itself. Today I had a very long walk, although it was a short distance. The walk became long because my mind was occupied with so many thoughts. It was quite entertaining; these thoughts formed a kind of circle around the ashram in Jhadan. I was looking at the actions, at the creations, at what has been done over the last twenty years in this place. Many of those actions became very vivid in my mind. There were good experiences and some painful experiences. I remembered when I first came here. There was only nature. No real building, not so many trees, no people around. Now it is a living identity, a kind of village. All that has been created over 20 or 25 years can be brought back to one activity. In yoga terms, and what in India is becoming very famous, it is called Seva. Seva normally translates as selfless service. That sounds very nice, good, and healthy. But I ask myself: is there anything really that we can do as a selfless action? Let us go back about 40 years, when I was a young man. I had a very wise, life-experienced auntie. She survived two world wars and the Great Depression. Her life was very much dedicated to service for others. Once I picked her up from the railway station to drive her back home, and suddenly she had a young man with a musical instrument with her. She did not say anything to me, she did not tell me anything; she just said, "Ah, this young man is with me, let's drop him there where he is at home." It was about 15 kilometers away from her home. When we reached her house, she told me, "Look, it is good to do something good every day, at least once. But sometimes it is very difficult to even have the chance." If we translate this into our life, it seems very normal for us to be here, to do seva, to serve, to support. But if you look around in the world, you will find many people who would like to do so but are not in that capacity, who do not have the opportunity, who are not blessed with that opportunity. Either through sickness or because they stand in the midst of life, there is not a possibility in that way, although they can do it in a small, small form, but not in a real, long, continuous way. The great sage Swāmī Śivānanda from Rishikesh said once, very simply, "Do good, be good." "Do good" means, translated to the spiritual level, to lead a spiritual life. And "be good" means to serve. To do a good deed means to live a spiritual life; to be good means to do good, to serve. In the yoga tradition, there is a lot of emphasis on service. It starts from the beginning, from the ṛṣis up to the modern ṛṣis. Service is a key factor, a key agenda. We can put it in a box and say there are four types of sevā: kāya, mana, dhana, and bhajana. Kāya-sevā: we do actively with our hands, physically we serve. That is what Swāmījī normally always emphasizes: helping hands are better than folding hands. Mana-sevā means to do sevā with the mind. That includes meditation, that includes your mantra. Dhana means to give offerings, to support in a material way. And bhajana means to do service by words, lectures, writing good books, singing bhajans, and so on. If we talk about selfless service, is it really possible to do selfless service? It incorporates little to do with yourself, with your small self, with your ego. The bigger the ego is, the less we can do real seva, and the smaller the ego is, the more it can blossom in a selfless way. The great scientist Einstein found or developed a great formula: E equals mc². Mass and energy and light. If we translate it on a spiritual level, logically we can see: E equals MC squared. Ego equals 'me' multiplied by 'I am' squared. So it means the smaller the 'me', the smaller is also the ego. It is not easy to say, "Yes, we are doing service, we are doing Seva." Everybody has a different opinion, a different approach to it. If we do it out of a specific purpose, intention, according to that, the quality of our service is given. Now, just imagine you want to do something: "I want, I can, I must, I have, I want, I will." This is this "I," and a word with characteristics: time, "I want." As long as we connect these both, 'I' and time, we always get stuck in the real karma of action and reaction. As we put inside, things will come outside. Whatever seed we put inside, that will grow. Action and reaction, cause and effect, concealed and revealed. If we do something good, we should first be aware of the intention or motivation with which we are doing it, or at least out of which motivation we want to do it. But are we aware of it? We have to know ourselves quite well to find out the deep underlying motivation of our actions. Think of anything in your daily routine, in your daily actions. Why are you doing it? Why do you want to do it? Why are you here? What is the purpose of that? Somebody told you? Or does it come from an inner longing? Or have you been attracted from outside? Or did you always want to be in India, in an ashram? You like the spiritual environment, and what is your real purpose of being here, to serve? Seva has so many faces, but the outcome is different. Although we are coming here to do sevā, it will always have a positive effect. Except if we do it for a very long time and we forget, actually, why we are here, why we came. Because many times that helping syndrome turns out, after some time, as a burden. Only to do seva without doing sādhanā, or to see it as a sādhanā, we miss something, and it easily leads to some point of frustration or disappointment. So many times when we think we do something good, actually there is something inside that is shooting back. There is a real story from Jhadan. There was a muni living there, and a bus driver. By whatever accident, they died at the same time. Reaching in front of the door of heaven, Yamarāja was standing there with his great book. No, this was not a book, sorry. It is a computer. Yes. Typing inside, Munirāja. There is a list of 10,000 Munirājas. Yes, yes... The gates of heaven opened; the bus driver entered into the light and disappeared. Now Munirāja was standing there, and Yamarāja said, "I think I have there some note." So he opened the note on his laptop. "I think you have to wait a little bit and roast in that Loka. There is something not clear with you still." Munirāja objected, "How is that possible? I lived such a good life all the time. I did such good work. I gave so many satsaṅgs." Yamarāja looked and said, "Yes, it is true. You gave so many satsaṅgs. And when I look in my notes, it is like a film in front of my eyes, and I can see so many people sleeping there." Munirāja objected, "And this bus driver, why can he go inside?" Yamarāja replied, "Yes, this bus driver, he was driving the bus. And I can see in my notes, so many people started to pray." So that was his good karma which came back to him. So sometimes when we think we do something good, actually it is not always so good. It is the intention, the purpose of that. So when we talk about Seva, everybody has a different relation to it. And selfless service, as a Seva, is very difficult to attain. It goes step by step. But if you look towards God's creation, this world, this planet, it vibrates literally by the idea, by the concept of seva. Look into nature, from the small ant in the forest to the big tree; they serve each other. Look to the saints; they serve the creation. God serves the creation. Nature serves humans. The body, what we have inside the body, the organs, serve the person, the man. But when man came up from the tree of the monkeys and stepped a little bit aside, his intellect developed. And with the intellect, he started to see the creation in a different way. He was blinded, ignorant, and he forgot what real service is, because it is inherent in him. But he always wanted to get something out of his action, be it money, be it recognition, and so on. He identified with the action that he put in. But we always get reminded by the saints, by good people, by great personalities in every field of life. This can be a mother. A mother starts to be really a mother when she does not see only her child as hers, but other children also as hers, and she serves them in the same way. That is real service, that is sevā. In this ashram, seva is the base of our activity. It is a kind of karma yoga, and we do as we learn. Swamiji is serving us here, and we serve him back, if you want to express it in that way. But still, if we expect something back, it is not real Seva. Seva starts there when we do not have little expectation in that what we put inside, that something comes back to us. Of course, everybody does in certain ways, even if we expect his gratitude, his blessing, his grace. But seva means to put that mercy of ourselves into action with a heart, with love, with understanding. It is a kind of giving and not asking back. It is difficult to practice, but it is easier to put it in action when we can offer the outcome of our action, the results of our action, the results of our sēvā. We can offer it to our deity, to our iṣṭadevatā, if we keep in mind the great words, "Nāhaṁ kartā." Not I am doing, He is doing. And I do not have any rights on the fruits of my action. Because in my ignorance, I am doing many things that I think are good but have not-so-good fruits. So it is easier to offer all my good and not-so-good actions and not look towards the fruits, and do it in the way that we say, "Whatever it is, up in your mercy. What will come back to me? You decide. What you want to give to me, it is up to you." It connects the service, the seva, with devotion. It is not an easy thing, because sometimes in life we are quite down, we are disappointed, we are worn out, and we have no patience, patience to wait and see, because it is a very important point to have patience when we do Seva. Because otherwise Seva can also hollow us, make us empty. And the most driving force in Seva should be love. Because it is not the love that we want to give, that I want to give you. Because what I do in seva is mainly I serve myself. I serve myself, and myself is not different from yourself. So what I do good for you, I do good for me, and there starts the problem. Because again, my motivation, my intention. But if we keep in mind that actually what we do for others, we do for ourselves, it enriches us, it lets us grow, it lets us blossom from inside, because the more we are in harmony with ourselves, the more we like ourselves, the more we love ourselves, the more we are able to give, and not the other way around. So in this ashram we live, we breathe, and we serve. And coming back to the great Swāmī Śivānanda, he also told of four basic activities. He said, "Serve, love, meditate, realize." And if you listen carefully to these four qualities, we know a saint is not saying anything by chance. He has a reason why he is saying what he says, before or after. He said first, "Serve." He did not say first, "Love." Service is the base, the foundation. The foundation on which the other qualities or activities can be built up in a safe way. For a successful life, and a successful life is one that ends in, or is based in, self-realization. We have very high expectations from ourselves. It is not much to ask for. We do not ask for mokṣa, at least for self-realization. So, it may take some lives more, but to come there, it is necessary. To have a guru, to have, of course, a human life to meditate, that includes all types of sādhanā and japa and selfless service, at least two free lives, so then it is successful. Then we can say we come to some point. So seva is on the base. Second is love. Love nourishes seva. And that love leads to meditation, the longing to know who we are. The source is our own self. From where are we coming, and where are we going? And then, of course, realization. And realization has many phases, but the final realization is definitely according to our concepts. What we can think about, what we can grasp with our intellect, is brahmajñāna. Not so bad when we are there, as I say it now, but if we are there? Maybe it is different. Maybe it just starts. But coming back to that base, in this ashram, nothing would be without seva. Every single action that has been performed here can be traced back to Seva. You can say, "Okay, this was built by some mason who was paid for it." That is true. But where did money come? It came through Seva. All this that we are seeing around is a kind of Seva. And when we come back to that concept of selfless service, it bears fruits, but we still do not see that roots are growing in all directions already. Because sometimes we only put a seed inside the earth, and one plant comes out. But there are also seeds that grow under the earth and later come out. And this output will be seen not only in this generation, but it will bear big fruits, rich fruits, in the coming generations. We will not be there in physical form, but we did our part in that whole thing. And that is a part of our spiritual life. That is part of our seva, that is part of our sādhanā. And that will be part of our understanding of the depths of life, the depths of human existence, and we will share that. All these things would not happen if our father had not shown us. We learn through seeing things, and we experience through putting them into action. Once we understand, it should be our joy to give it further. That is what spirituality and seva bring together. When a human is free from selfish action and is doing or completely absorbed in the divine will, then everything is impossible, and everything is possible. Śrī Śrīdheśvara Mahādeva kī jaya, Śrī Mārav Kṛṣṇa Bhagavān kī jaya, Viśva Guru Mahāmaleśvara Paramahaṁsānāmī Maheśvara Anampurījī Mahārāja kī jaya ho.