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Om Bole Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jai. Śrī Śrī Deva Puruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jai. Dharam Samrat Paramahaṁt Śrī Svāmī Madhavānand Purādhī Mahārāj Kī Jai. Viśva Guru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvar Paramahaṁt Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānand Purādhī Satguru Deva Kī Jai. Hari Om. To those who have come from Switzerland today, welcome. Because they are here, the translation will be into German. Welcome to Jaraṇ Āśram, especially to our friends from Switzerland. Grazie. Swāmījī is today in Nippel with the group that has come from Europe, staying the night there. Tomorrow morning he will be coming back towards Jaran, so tomorrow night he will again be on the webcast here in Jhāḍaṇ. I thought I would take the chance to give a kind of news report of what has happened in the last days. Swāmījī mentioned the conference he attended in Bangalore. Perhaps I can offer a slightly different perspective and a few more details. Swāmījī was invited to this conference by an Indian government department called ĀYUSH. This department is responsible for Āyurveda, Yoga, Unānī, Siddha, and Homeopathy. It works to promote these systems within India and develop facilities for their use. This conference had a particular focus on yoga and naturopathy. There is a large university in Bangalore dedicated to teaching yoga and naturopathy. Promoting naturopathy was one of Gandhi's great wishes; he described it as the cheapest way to maintain good health among villagers. He believed that by promoting naturopathic practices and diet, much medicine could be saved and people could afford to stay well. This conference reflected a move back towards that ideal. The government is giving a major push to establish facilities, particularly naturopathic hospitals, for the public. As Swāmījī said last night, the four most important medicines are water, earth, air, and fire (sun). A slogan was made in Hindi stating that these four are worth a thousand allopathic medicines. Many people attended: doctors from these various practices, yoga teachers, and representatives from all sides. The intention was also to integrate the spiritual dimension by inviting spiritual leaders. The organizers felt that without the support and backing of spiritual leaders, they would not have as much success. For this, they held a large program inviting spiritual leaders from throughout India—not only from the Hindu tradition, but also Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, and from many different schools of South Indian Hinduism. The two main speakers were Swāmījī and another Swami, Soham Bābā from Bengal. It was a long function of three or four hours, but truly inspiring in its unity. Everyone spoke about one central aim: to improve everyone's health. In general, every speaker emphasized that physical health and spiritual health must go together. The Sanskrit and Hindi word for health is svāsthya. The two parts of that word are sva (the self) and stha (to be established). So it means to establish yourself in yourself, to become in harmony with your own body and its needs. To achieve this, yoga and the naturopathic approach to medicine are complementary. Unlike the allopathic approach, which tries to kill the disease (viruses and bacteria), the naturopathic approach tries to remove the disease from the body. Sitting in the conference during the various lectures was inspiring, yet I also felt a little sorry. The simple fact of our human nature is that we hear these great, good things, but we walk out the door and do not implement them. I thought to myself how funny it is that we are satisfied with the states of our existence that we could change, while we get upset about the ones we can do nothing about. We may not be sick at the moment, but does that mean we should be satisfied? We could be better. We could be more well. An example came to me from Bangalore. About ten years ago, Bangalore had a million people; now it has eight or nine million. As a result, the traffic is absolutely terrible. If you set out at 10 a.m., you can forget going anywhere within two or three hours, even for just four or five kilometers—it's one big jam. I recalled the standard Bangalore statement from the day we traveled. Because it was Sunday, there wasn't much traffic. We asked the driver, "How long will it take to get there?" The conference venue was only three kilometers away. "Only about half an hour. Today the traffic is very good." For him, it was a very good condition, but that doesn't mean it was truly good. It was only relative to how it is on Monday. It's okay to say it's good, but the people of Bangalore cannot accept forever that the traffic should be so bad. Something should change, and it is changing with a lot of construction. The same applies to our own bodies. When we look at ourselves, we think, "Today I feel good." But is our concept of good health the same as Bangalore's concept of good traffic? Could it really be a lot better? Using the principles within naturopathy, could our health not be a lot better? These are not world-changing things; they are simple practices like drinking more water, drinking warm water in the morning, which has a strong effect on the body. From the yoga perspective, practicing a little āsana daily and always looking to improve the intensity with which we do it. These are powerful things, so why shouldn't we improve? Who knows what our potential is? These are very strong and inspiring ideas. We should ask ourselves: why should we not actually increase our potential? To simply say we are satisfied with our body does not acknowledge that we could achieve much more. Perhaps many have experienced this during Navarātrī when fasting. The energy that comes after some days—on the fifth, sixth, or seventh day of fasting—makes you aware of how heavy we make ourselves by eating too much. Navarātrī is a nine-day festival where people fast, often taking only fruits and milk. We gain that awareness during those nine days, but on the tenth day, the fast is over. From my own experience, by the twelfth day you can generally forget about it until next Navarātrī. It's funny: we know how good we can feel by taking care of our diet and our practice. What is it about ourselves that thinks we don't deserve to feel like that all the time? That is what we need to change—to realize that we deserve to be so well. Parts of our health we cannot control, but the parts in our hands, the care of ourselves, we can take care of. It was a truly beautiful conference. I did not go with great enthusiasm initially, as it was government-run and I had my doubts. But I was pleasantly surprised. I knew of the enthusiasm from the spiritual leaders present, but the enthusiasm from the government side and the way they took to their task to promote these things was really great. They were rewarded for their efforts: on Sunday, more than 100,000 people came through the gates to see the conference. There is a second piece of news, which may be sad or not, depending on your perspective. Yesterday, our old horse Sultan, who has been here for so many years, left his body and went, I guess, to his next race. Sultan was a thoroughbred horse who came to the ashram about fourteen years ago. Before that, we do not know much. He was a racehorse in Mumbai and Pune, then in Bikaner, owned by someone who happened to be working here at the ashram. He was quite unmanageable, which somehow delivered him to us. For me, and I think for many others, Sultan was a teacher—a presence in the ashram that gave everybody a lesson or two, or maybe ten or a hundred. Anyone who remembers when he first arrived knows he was truly wild. Trained as a racehorse, he was conditioned to run when you sat on him. He was pure energy, a Śakti going out with no real direction. But over time, he changed profoundly. At that time, Durgāpurī from Australia was here. He knew about horses and spent a lot of time with Sultan. It wasn't just care; Sultan was also therapy for all of us, a release, a place to go with frustrations. The transformation over the next two years, as Durgāpurī and others poured love into him, was amazing. He became so peaceful and calm. It is almost unimaginable to compare the horse from the first days to the one I saw a few years later, lying down in the stable with Durgāpurī, his head on Durgāpurī's stomach, sleeping. A fantastic example of the power of love to transform nature. As time went on, Sultan became so peaceful that all our children in the hostel learned to ride on him. With a small child on him, he would never give any problem; you could be completely confident. Yet, there was still a power there. If you did not take care of it and respect it, you could get a lesson. Some of you may remember, many years ago, Phulburjī got a lesson from Sultan. Phulburjī was walking Sultan to eat grass in the fields near the Omāśram. At that time, Phulburjī was quite new here and had past experience riding camels. As he later said, "I just thought it's like riding a camel," so he jumped on with no saddle, reins, bridle, or any real communication of respect towards Sultan. Sultan proceeded to make a land-speed record from the Omāśram to the workshop, with Phulburjī holding onto his mane. Coming around the corner of the workshop at full speed towards the wood workshop doors, Sultan then showed Phulburjī how good his brakes were by stopping on the spot. As Phulburjī lay on the ground in front of him, Sultan just looked at him with a very peaceful expression, as if saying, "A little bit of respect." There are so many stories about Sultan, so many experiences everyone has had with him. He was like a very special soul here in the ashram. In one way we will miss him, but he will always be there, at least in my heart, as quite a teacher on the yoga path. One more short story from Sultan relates well to the Naturopathic Conference. He gives perhaps the greatest example I know of the power diet can have over the body. Here was this huge thoroughbred horse, very tall and powerful. One chapātī (wheat flatbread), and he would become completely crazy. Sultan could eat any other type of grain, but wheat made him mentally lose it. This was something we learned early on when he was hard to control. We experimented with his diet, changing this and that, noticing what made him calmer or more agitated. Here was an animal weighing five or six hundred kilos. In later years, if someone gave him a chapātī, we could see from a distance and think, "Oh no, somebody's given him a chapātī again." It was inevitably that same person who had left him here. We would go to him and ask, "Did you give him a chapātī again?" "Oh, I had to; he looked so hungry." People always had an excuse. The effect of that wheat in his system would last for two days. For me, this is a powerful example of what a different diet does to us—how it affects us, how it affects us mentally. These are things that may take time to understand in ourselves, but it is worth knowing. By paying attention and gaining that knowledge, we can transform our life, our state of being, our health, and our mental balance. It is very easy to dismiss it and say, "Oh, maybe it's for somebody who is really imbalanced, but not for me." But come back again to the analogy of Bangalore traffic. When we bring our awareness to these things—to our yoga practice, our diet, our lifestyle—we may find we can feel even better than we ever imagined. It is not about making a big external transformation; it is already there. It just requires some fine adjustment, some fine tuning. Amarāja kīrya.