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Om bole Śrī Deep Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān kīrtan, Śrī Śrī Dev Puruṣa Mahādeva kīrtan, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁsa Śrī Sāī Maravanan Purjī Mahārāj kīrtan, Viśva Guru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁsa Śrī Sāī Maheśvaranām Purjī Satguru Dev kīrtan. Hari Om. Many greetings from Jadam. Today, I believe Swamiji is walking in the mountains, so he will not be having a webcast. Therefore, the webcast is coming from Jadam, which we consider quite cold. For those watching in Europe, however, this might seem a little bit of a joke. One night, the temperature dropped to four degrees. Here, that meant schools were closed for four days, with children strictly forbidden from attending. Today, they finally allowed school to resume. So for us, it is cold. In Europe, you have many facilities to cope with the cold: heating, doors that seal properly, and windows that do not let air through. Here, the windows tend to have a special form of air conditioning, which is unfortunately much more effective in winter than in summer. It can be very cold at night when the wind is blowing. Tomorrow is a special day in Indian culture called Makarasaṅkrānti. There is a Saṅkrānti every month, marking the day the sun enters a new part of the zodiac, a new month. The day of transition is called a Saṅkrānti. Among all of them, this one is celebrated as very special and significant across the country in many different ways. Speaking to different people, each gives a different reason for its significance. One significance is that the sun is entering the zodiac of Saturn (Śani) in India. As Sūrya is the father of Śani, it is said he is coming to visit his son. Some people have told me the significance is that Saturn and the Sun do not get along well. Yet, despite their conflict, the Sun ensures he visits his son's house once a year and spends one month there. Another significance, according to Hindu tradition, is that this is the time when the sun starts to turn back towards the north. Scientifically, you would say that occurs on the solstice. But I would say tomorrow is the day it starts to visibly move northward. This is regarded as very significant, important, and auspicious. This last month here in Rajasthan has been a month of waiting. It is said that in this month, when the sun is at its lowest point south, it is not an auspicious time to start something new. Niranjan Purūjī has been wondering why certain works in the Omāśram have not yet started. I am sure they had to wait until tomorrow. It is also considered that from tomorrow, it is a particularly auspicious time to die. You can find this in the Mahābhārata. If you remember, when Pitāmah Bhīṣma is lying on the bed of arrows, he lies there for months. Bhīṣma has the boon, the blessing, that he can choose the day of his death. Although Arjuna shot him many months earlier, bringing him to a point where he could not move, he spent a long time lying on that bed of arrows, giving satsaṅg—like another Gītā, where Bhīṣma gives his philosophical teachings. He waited until the sun turned towards the north, until Makarasaṅkrānti, to leave his body. It is said that if one leaves the body while the sun is far south, they will go towards the lower realms. Now, as the sun travels back north, one will go higher. Premanānjī tried to explain to me this afternoon that it is because people were scared of having their next birth in Australia, in the south, or in New Zealand. But I do not think that is it. One of the other special things for this festival in Jaipur—interestingly, in Jaipur and Gujarat, but not here—is the festival of flying kites. I used to live in Jaipur for a few years. Tomorrow, everybody is on their rooftop flying kites: not just children, but parents and grandparents, everyone with a string and their kite in the air. They use quite sharp strings, and the game in Jaipur is to try and cut everybody else’s strings so their kites will fall. From about 8 o'clock in the morning, everyone is on the roof, and you will hear these calls when someone's string is cut, and everyone else cheers. When I was there, and Āvatār Purī was young, his game was to collect all the kites that fell inside the ashram. You can imagine the volume. The Jaipur Ashram is not so big, yet more than 200 kites fell just inside the ashram walls that day, forming a large pile. Every couple of hours, many children would come, and we would give them these piles of kites so they could use them again. In Gujarat, they also fly kites a lot, but there they have huge ones, and the object is to get them as high as possible into the sky. They say that is symbolic of striving toward the heavens, striving as high as you can in your life. We had quite a good discussion this afternoon, Premanandjī and I. He was saying about the cutting in Jaipur: that is because everyone else is trying to cut you down as you strive towards the sky. It would be better if everyone rose toward the sky together than to just try to land each other’s kite in the garden. Everywhere in India, it is also a time for special food. Here in Rajasthan, it is a dish made from whole kernels of corn, sesame, and gourd. They prepare the sesame and the gourd separately, cook them together, and serve them the next day. From my experience, people either love it or do not like it at all. It is very heavy, very strong, but that is for this season. The food we are eating at the moment is really full of energy because of the winter and the cold. That is just the dish for that day. For some reason, everyone here will decide tomorrow that it is much warmer than it was yesterday. I have had good arguments sometimes with someone. In degrees, it is actually colder, but they say it cannot be colder because it is after Makarasaṅkrānti; the warm season is already starting, so it must be warm. Also, for everyone here, it is a time when the crops slowly start to ripen, as the wheat will soon start to grow bigger and develop the grains on top. So today, tomorrow is a day of a new beginning again, an auspicious time to start new things. Keep it in mind: if you have been putting something off, it must have been Mahāprabhujī holding you back, waiting for the 14th of January. Now it is time to move with it. For us also, I would like to say Hari Om to those who celebrate together our Sannyās Dīkṣā day today. Māgha Saṅkrānti is also one of the days of bathing in the Kumbh Melā. When the Kumbh Mela is in Ilāhābād, in Prayāg, it means that one day from tomorrow, we will all be bathing again in Ilāhābād in the Saṅgam. Thinking about that, I thought I could just tell the story of the crazy three days. There is a three-day period in the Kumbh Mela when we took Sannyās Dīkṣā. For those involved in organizing, they will remember it very well. On the 12th, it was the first time Swāmījī gave a bandhāra to all of the sādhus in the Akhāṛā. That was the first time he had done that, so it was very intense and completely unknown—really busy. That was on the 12th. On the 14th was the first time Swāmījī was going in the Sai Snān in Ilāhābād. At that time also, nobody knew what to expect, how it would be, or what to prepare. It was a very, very intense thing to organize. Of course, Swāmījī must have decided that between the 12th and the 14th we might have been bored, so on the 13th was Sannyās Dīkṣā. It was the fastest three days I can remember. How quickly the year passes. It hardly seems months ago since we were in Haridwar, and now soon we will be again at Kumbh. We will again have that chance on Makarasaṅkrānti to bathe with Gurujī, with Swāmījī, in the Gaṅgā, in the Saṅgam. We will have a chance to bathe with our Master.