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Asatoma sadgamaya. Lead us from unreality to reality. Tamasomā jyotirgamaya. Lead us from darkness to light. Mṛtyormā mṛtyuṁgamaya. Lead us from death to immortality. Sarveṣāṃ svastir bhavatu. May all be happy. Sarveṣāṁ śāntir bhavatu. May all be in peace. Salve Samaṅgalam Bhavatu. May all God fulfill their wishes. Salve Samāpūrṇam Bhavatu. May all be in happiness. May all be in good health. Oṃ Tryambakaṃ Yajāmahe Sugandhiṃ Puṣṭi Vardhanam, Urvārukamiva Bandhanān Mṛtyormukṣīya Māmṛtāt. Ahaṃ Karatā? I am not the doer. Prabhudevaḥ Karatā. God is the doer. Mahāprabhujī karatā hai kevalam. God is the only doer. Om Śānti, Śānti,... Om peace, peace, peace. The subject of today is the Mānasik Pūjā. What is Mānasik Pūjā? Mānasik Pūjā is mental worship, service to the Iṣṭadevatā. The Iṣṭadevatā is the personal God, and the Iṣṭadevatā we choose according to our feeling, according to our heart, where it goes. The Iṣṭadevatā is the personal choice of our heart. We may be poor, with no possibility to make all the arrangements for external worship, and we can offer to God, to our Iṣṭadevatā, whatever we want. While having the Mānasik Pūjā, we are with our Iṣṭadevatā in imaginary form. The question is, why worship at all? We are worshipping God because we would like to be close to God. We would like to purify our mind. We would like to steady the mind. And that is what we like to do, because we would like to have the meditation, but we say the samādhi. We have two kinds of worship: the external worship and the internal worship. We want to come close to God. We want to feel Him in our heart. God doesn’t need our worship. We need Him to accept our offerings. So the Mānasik Pūjā is said to be higher than the external Pūjā. So we decide, for example, that we take our beloved Gurudev Swamījī as our Iṣṭadevatā, and we decide that we will worship his holy feet. We start the pūjā in a way that we invite our iṣṭadevatā to be with us. Co znamená āsana? Āsana is what we say, the importance of the person who sits on it. Like the judge, for example, it has its own place to sit; it is his authority. And we ask the good Gurudev, what is a guru? And the guru says that the guru is the darkness, and the guru is the light. That’s so simple. That’s what will lead us, the principle that will lead us from darkness to light. We salute the Gurudev by presenting him a flower garland. All this is in imaginary form, yes. Then we offer him a tilak. We put a tilak on his forehead. The tilak is a mixture of sandalwood and kesar, or saffron, and we apply it with the ring finger on the forehead, where the spiritual center, the Ājñā Chakra, is located, and then we put some rice. The whole rice we check; when we put the rice we check that the rice is fully, that it’s not cracked. It stands for the protection from any accident, and then we go further with the pūjā. We put an eating table under his feet. What we can see here in the down part is that we have the eating table. Then we put some thali, the plate, in such a way that it will collect our offerings. Then we start the pūjā, and we started already, so we offer the pañcāmṛta, the five nectars. The first of the five nectars is the milk. The milk is what nourishes us in childhood, in babyhood. We remember that at that time we were so pure and innocent. So our first mother is the natural mother who gave us birth, and they say that the second mother is the cow, that we grow from the milk that we got in childhood also. So much they give importance and respect to the cow in India. The second amṛt is the yogurt that we offer. The yogurt is another form of the milk; it’s a milk product. The yogurt is what we do; we extract the ghee from the yogurt. The third offering is the ghee. The ghee is the most purified form of the milk. You cannot purify the ghee. The ghee is completely pure. The ghee is used for worships, při obřadech. It does not need any cooling. Although it’s a milk product, it can stay many, many years without getting spoiled. The fourth amṛt that we offer is the honey. The honey is a collection from different flowers. The honey, in this case, stands for the essence of nature. So by doing the mental worship, we remember all this. It gives us deeper understanding, deeper worship when God is pleased. The last amṛt that we offer to the Gurudev’s feet is sugar. The sugar in this time represents the senses, so we like sweet, and we offer the senses to the Gurudev. Why? Because in this way the Gurudev can help us more. After the five amṛts of the offering are ready, we remove the tālī, the plate that contains all the offerings. Then we tie a maulī, a string, a cotton string, on his right big foot, right big toe. This makes a connection, a spiritual connection, between the one who is giving the maulī, the string, and the one who receives the string. We offer nuts, prasád, blessed food. Dry fruits, fruits, gur, the raw sugar cane, suché ovoce. We offer flowers, so the flowers have the good fragrance. The fragrance of the flowers makes the devas, the eternal beings, happy. They are nourished by the smell. So we offered already the nuts and the fruits, you can see. Then we offer our big and hard ego. The coconut, so it’s clear, represents our ego. This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. Then we offer some dakṣiṇā, the money. You can offer more than one rupee in this case. And you hope that you will get more, that you will be able to travel all the way to India to see our monastery, Jādana Āśram. And money, we don’t hate money. And we don’t mind if we have 50 euros more in the pocket. So money also represents our desires and longings, and this we offer to the Gurudev. Then the mental worship comes slowly to its end. So we make the pūjā, the ceremony, and for this we are making the āratī. For the āratī, we are lighting the dīpak, the oil lamp, the ghee lamp. And we lit the agarbatī, the incense stick. And the fragments, again, are for pleasing the ethereal beings. Om Guru Brahmā, the Guru is the creator. Guru Raviṣṇu, the guru is a sustainer. A guru is the maintainer. Guru Devo Maheśvarā, the guru is the destroyer. The protector. Ochráncem. Guru Raviṣṇu, the guru is the destroyer. The guru is all of this trinity, the three gods. And we offer our praṇāms, the salutation. We are bowing down our head to the Gurudev. Gurudev represents all these three aspects of God, and we worship Him and bow to His feet. Dhyāna mūlaṁ guru mūrtiḥ. The essence of the meditation is the guru form. Pūjya mūlaṁ guru pādam. The essence of the pūjās, the ceremonies, is the guru’s feet. Mantra mūlaṁ gurū vākyaṁ. The essence of mantras is the guru’s words. Mokṣa mūlaṁ guru kṛpā. The essence of deliberations is the guru’s grace. And we have all the, what we collect from the five amṛtas, the nectars. And we keep some for us also, and we keep some for ourselves.