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Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Śrī Śrī Dev Purīṣa Mahādeva Kī Jaya, Satguru Svāmī Madhavānandajī Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Satya Sanātana Dharma Kī Jaya. Blessed Self, all dear ones, blessings to all of you—the blessing of our Divine Alakhpurījī, Siddha Pīṭh Paramparā, the blessing of the Divine Mother Annapūrṇā, and the blessing of the Cosmic Self. To everyone here in this hall and to all dear listeners around the world, I wish you a very good time. Life continues, life struggles, but this Jīvātmā does not give up. This Jīvātmā has its aim, its destination, and that is the cosmic Self. Brahma Jñāna means to become one with Brahman. When we place a seed in the ground, no matter how it falls, it grows. Always the seed sprouts toward the light. In the same way, each and every entity—no matter the form or the situation—has the same destination: to merge back into its origin. The inner self knows that being in this mṛtyuloka, in this body of five elements, brings experiences that are sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes painful, but all of this is passing. Of course, the human consciousness, the human intellect, human experiences, memories, consciousness, and feelings are clearer than those of other creatures. That is why we call it inner cetanā. Chetana—you can say consciousness, or chetan, the awakened one. Imagine a room where five people are sleeping. Out of the five, one is awake and four are deep in slumber. If a snake or some dangerous animal enters the room, the one who is awake can awaken everyone. But if all five are sleeping deeply, they cannot wake one another, and they will become victims of that poisonous or wild creature. Similarly, the Gurudev is the awakened one in this room of mṛtyuloka, while we are all sleeping in the sleep of ignorance. We slumber in that ignorance, dreaming many dreams—good or bad—but we are not aware of the real situation we face. Holy Gurujī expressed this in a beautiful bhajan: “Bhāī tum jāgore, terā auśar bītā jāī, bhāī tum jāgore.” Oh my dear ones, brothers and sisters, wake up. You are missing your chance, the opportunity. Brother, wake up: you are still in the sleep of ignorance. You have been suffering for lifetimes. This sleep is avidyā, and avidyā means ignorance. We are sleeping in the sleep of ignorance. Janam Janam Dukh Pāī. The result is that in every life we will suffer. Brother, wake up! Your opportunity is passing by. Why are you entangled in the snare of moha, living like a snake and dying like a snake? Moha—attachment—is also called ignorance. Day by day we become further caught in that net of the ignorance of moha. One day we will die in this net of moha, like a spider. A spider weaves a very fine web, but one day the spider itself gets stuck in it and cannot free itself. That net becomes the cause of the spider’s death. In the same way, we are stuck in the attachment of ignorance, the moha, and one day it will lead us again to that Caurāsī Cakra. Therefore, wake up. Avidyā sabhī dukhoṁ kā kāraṇa hai, aur vidyā hī sukhoṁ kā kāraṇa hai. Ignorance is the cause of all troubles, sufferings, and pain, and vidyā—knowledge—is the cause of happiness and freedom. So, are you chetan or achetan? Chetan is awakened, conscious, alert, full of knowledge. Achetan is in unconsciousness, unaware, knowing nothing. As I promised to share with you, here is a beautiful bhajan from the great saint Kabīr Dās Mahārāj. Kabīr Dās was a great poet, a great saint, and he wrote bhajans of nirguṇa. You know there are two kinds of bhakti: saguṇa bhakti and nirguṇa bhakti. Nirguṇa bhakti means devotion to Brahman, to God, who has no form, is eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, and formless—and yet we feel and know that it is our own. Saguṇa bhakti means we adore, worship, and meditate on the saguṇa form in which this divine spirit or divine jīvātmā resides—the body created from the five elements. In the twelfth chapter of the Bhagavad Gītā, Arjuna asks Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa, “Bhagavān, which kind of bhakti is better—nirguṇa bhakti or saguṇa bhakti?” Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa replied, “Arjuna, both are good, both are very good, but in this Kali Yuga it is better to have saguṇa bhakti, meaning God who incarnates in a human form, or the saint. Why? Because they can answer your questions.” Otherwise, you will only imagine the answer. You will think, “Should I do it or not?” and you will imagine the outcome by yourself: “Yes, of course, I will do it. I like it. I am like this.” But you do not know what the result will be. Therefore, we need the Satguru Dev, who can give us that Viveka, that Jñāna. In the Karma Yoga chapter, Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna, “Arjuna, before performing any karma, know the nature of the karma; then your viveka will tell you what kind of fruit you will harvest.” Just as when you plant an apple seed, you know it will produce apples. When you plant cherry seeds, you know you will harvest cherries. And if you sow the seeds of a thorny bush, you know a thorny bush will grow. But if you close your eyes and throw many seeds, you do not know what kind of seeds you are throwing. Therefore, chetan—awaken and know exactly, and then sow the seeds. Finally, from saguṇa we must come to nirguṇa, because our form, our self, is also nirguṇa. That nirguṇa is Nirmohī. You may remember a story I told a few days ago in the webcast—the story of the Nirmohī Rājā, the detachment-king. That Nirmohī is our Ātmā; that is the king. Do not think that the ātmā is attached to our body. The ātmā is not attached to our mind, our emotions, or our intellect. Whatever happens to your body is happening to the body, not to the ātmā. The Ātmā, just as it is, neither comes nor goes—it simply is. Like the sky: Nitya, everlasting; Ekam, only one; Śuddham, pure; Nirākāra, formless; Akhaṇḍa, unbreakable. What changes is the body, matter, and this changeable world; the Ātmā does not change. But this Jīvātmā, entangled in the body, involved with the senses, is caught by the net of Moha—Kāma, Krodha, Madha, Lobha, Moha. These are the five thieves, the five crocodiles, and sooner or later they will eat you, destroy you. The opposite forces that remove them are vairāgya, bhakti, tyāga, jñāna, and tapasyā. Now, in this bhajan, Kabīr Dās speaks as a nirguṇa bhakta. He speaks of nirguṇa, and he asks: Who is seated in this body—cetana or acetana? Perhaps you are sleeping in your ignorance. What are we doing? The kuṇḍalinī sādhanā—the dormant energy, the hidden powers in human beings. If this dormant energy awakens, it will also draw other karmas with it, but along the way all the karmas, all the dust, will fall away, and it will arrive at purity, at pureness, at Brahman. It is like the lotus that grows from muddy, dirty water in a pond. The lotus bud must pass through that dirty, muddy water, yet when it finally opens, the unfoldment of each and every petal is utterly clean, beautiful, and pure. If you throw dust on it, the dust will not stay. If you splash dirty water, it will slide off. Similarly, when consciousness is awakened, when you are conscious and aware of this, then you are coming to Brahman. But as we consider our subject, the pañcakośa: Annamaya kośa, prāṇamaya kośa, vijñānamaya kośa, ānandamaya kośa, and manomaya kośa—they are all polluted, or sometimes they are like a net; you cannot get out. The snake, once or twice a year, sheds a kind of skin over its whole body. That skin also covers the eyes, and the snake cannot see. Mahāprabhujī Karatā He Kevalam. The bhaktas of Kabīr Dās sing a very beautiful bhajan: “Chetan ho jā musāphir, gāḍī jāne vālī.” O traveller, wake up; become aware, become conscious. Wake up. Gāḍī jāne vālī hai—the train is about to depart. O my dear, wake up. The ticket window is already open. Which window? The human life. Which window? The human life. Your birth—go, reserve your ticket and reserve your seat. And what is that? Your satsaṅg. Go to satsaṅg. Reserve your seat for the cosmic Self in the boat of mokṣa that you board. Very soon the whistle will blow; the train will start. The signal is going down. The signal coming down to the earth means all the signals of your knee pain, back pain, weaker eyesight, weaker ears—everything. The signal is going down, and if you miss the train, it is gone; you will suffer. This is the essence of the complete, beautiful bhajan. Be in a hurry. Send a telegram to the next station that you are coming. What is the next station? Brahmaloka. The doors and everything are ready; someone is there to welcome you. Who is welcoming you? Ṣaṭ Puruṣa—those divine souls, divine ātmās, or divine saints. In English, one might call them angels. Have you seen any angels? Not yet, because you are still not at that next station. We can only imagine what the great ones, the wise ones, tell us. All the yamas will be waiting. So, good karma, bhakti, and satsaṅg—the angels are waiting to welcome you, my dear. This body is given to us to do sādhanā and wake up. Now consider energy, like the dīpak we have been discussing these last three days. In the dīpak, the oil is the prāṇamaya kośa, and the mind—you could say the wick—is your willpower, your inner striving, the one you speak of. When you say, “I am in completeness,” it doesn’t matter what your body says; that is weakness. As that weakness receives pure prāṇa, as the mind receives pure information, pure knowledge, satsaṅg, then the Vijñānamaya Kośa becomes that flame radiating pure, bright light. Here we see the bulb. If the light is gone and the prāṇa is gone, the bulb remains in darkness; we don’t even see the bulb. But if the prāṇa is pure and the bulb has no dust on it, the light will radiate much better, more clearly, and we will see. That is our Vijñānamaya Kośa. When the Vijñānamaya Kośa is clear, we can see in our room which object lies where. You will find what you are searching for. But if the light is off, you don’t know where it is. You try in the darkness to feel where your watch is; you reach out, and there is a cobra. You are surprised. But do not be surprised. It is not your mistake, nor the cobra’s mistake. Something is missing—the light. What is missing is our Vijñānamaya Kośa. Therefore, satsaṅg is the best way to keep our Vijñānamaya Kośa, our Caitanya, pure. Because of this, Mahāprabhujī composed a beautiful nirguṇa bhajan about Brahman, written by our universally worshipped Bhagavān Dīp Nārāyaṇa Mahāprabhujī, our Satguru Dev: “Chetan kā chīl kā svāmī ne dikhlā diyā Devpurījī. Chetan kā chīl kā svāmī ne dikhlā diyā Devpurījī. Se kar ke chetā diyā Devpurījī. Upadeś bhajan kā de kar ke chetā diyā Devpurījī.” Chetan kā chilkā dikhlā diyā Dev Purīṣa ne. Chetan, as I explained earlier, is Brahma, and Māyā is Jaḍa—this material is inert. Chetan ke to icchā nahīṁ, aur Jaḍa se kuśh nahīṁ hotā. Chetan has no desire, and this Jaḍa, this stone, can do nothing. How then did it create this world? What lies in between is called Icchā Śakti—the power of will. So, “Chetaṅka chilkā” means a reflection. It is like the ray of the sun streaming through your window: suddenly you say, “Oh, the sun is shining,” and you know which direction the sun is in. Upadeś means pravacan—preaching, inspiring. The Śrotriya Brahmaniṣṭha Satguru Dev: “Up” means near, as in Upaniṣad; “Sat” means the disciple sitting near Gurudev and listening to that wisdom. Upadeśa bhajanakā—so Gurudev explains the techniques, the sādhanā, which kriyā to practice in order to reach that light, to approach it. Right now we only see where it is; how to come to that light—that we will continue with tomorrow. My dear ones, I bless you all and wish you all the best. Have a very good evening. God bless you until tomorrow. Nā’haṁ Karatā, Prabhudīp Karatā, Mahāprabhudīp Karatā He Kevalam. Oṁ Śānti, Śānti, Śānti. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Śrī Śrī Devapurīṣa Mahādeva Kī Jaya, Satguru Svāmī Madhavānandajī Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Satya Sanātana Dharma Kī Jaya.