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Before coming to Jhadan, I was studying to be a physiotherapist. Although I am a very poor therapist—or not anymore—there are certain principles I learned in university that I find incredibly useful for one's spiritual practice. It's not about anatomy or the body, but about certain principles of treatment. We are on a journey dealing with our own mind, trying to control it and shift our thoughts and concentration in a certain direction. I must take Hemlātājī's example here. I have never had a treatment with her, but her presence suggests to me exactly what happens when you go for treatment. You know with your own mind: when you come to a sādhanā that is tough to do, you constantly think of reasons why you can't do it. This is very similar to many patients in physiotherapy. Of course, everyone wants to be free of pain and to be well, but they are not necessarily prepared to go through the exercises and the tapasyā required to get well again. Often, people will come with a list: "Oh yes, I did this and that, but it's hurting me so much here today, and I really don't know if I can do this," and so on. Somehow, Hemlātājī will sit there and just go, "Yes, yes... really? And how does it hurt? What happens?" A very convincing argument will emerge for why we shouldn't do the exercise today. After all that, everything will have come out from the patient about what is going on, what is hurting, and what is not. At the end, the therapist will say, "Very, very good. That sounds very serious, but we'll do it anyway," because it is what is good for that moment, for the body, for that treatment. When our mind starts to come up with excuses for why we shouldn't do something in our spiritual practice, in our sādhanā, if you can listen to it in that detached way like a therapist, you can often learn a lot about yourself and how your mind is working. If you just shut it off and don't listen, you miss a chance to learn about how your mind functions, what is operating. And at the end of that listening, you must still be firm and say, "Yes, but anyhow, we're still going to do this." These principles can apply physically, and they can also apply to your mental and spiritual journey. When someone comes for treatment or with a problem, the first step is to ask many questions: how did it happen? When did it start? What brings on that pain or problem? The goal is to collect as much information as possible before any other investigation or checking. It is the same with our life issues. If you want to change something about yourself or your behavior, ask yourself those questions: When does it happen? Why does it happen? Does it happen after you do certain things? In the morning or evening? When you're tired? Physically, you might ask: does it happen when it's hot or cold? When you start to ask these questions, you learn more about that issue. Does it happen when you meet certain people, or when you continuously do certain things? Once you construct that picture, you can think about how to change some of those seemingly causative factors. How can you change your environment so that you may do what you would like to do, rather than what you always end up doing? Let me give an example with your computer. Let's say you think, "Every time I turn on the computer at work, I always end up looking on the internet," and you're not getting work done. You may then look at your screen and think, "Well, seeing as that link to my favourite website is in the middle of the home screen, perhaps it's inviting me there all the time." If you moved it somewhere else, perhaps it would be better. I'm sure many people have the Yoga in Daily Life website as the first thing that opens on their browser. It's great because the first thing you see is yoga. You can think about your house, your work environment, and set it up so that the things you really would like to be doing or thinking are in the main parts of your life. It is commonly said that families don't talk together anymore. When you go into a house, the biggest thing is often the television. The constant statement is, "Nobody talks anymore; they're all watching television." Of course they are, because it's there in the middle of the room; it's the biggest thing, and all chairs face it. That environment is created so it becomes the focus. The question comes back to the Upaniṣad: both good things and pleasurable things are there. What do we want to be our focus? Then we must slowly transform our lives to draw toward those focuses. Another principle of treatment in physiotherapy, which you can apply to yourself when doing āsanas or trying to change your body, is to do something and then observe what happens. There are two sides to your body, so you have a reference. You can often see that one side is completely different from the other; one may be in better condition. If this side is working well and this side is not, you can use the good side as a reference for how to do the āsana and try to do the same on the other side. Also, don't just look immediately after you do it; see how long the effect lasts—one hour, a day, or until the morning. Another small principle is not to change too many things at once. Why? Because then you don't know what works. For instance, if you have a problem in a certain environment with certain people where you always get angry, you might think, "Okay, prāṇāyāma will help, and I should do relaxation, and I shouldn't see those people, and I should go to this other place." Afterwards, you didn't get angry, but you don't actually know why. Was it because you didn't see the person, or because you did the prāṇāyāma or relaxation, or because you went to that other place? Our whole practice, our whole yoga sādhanā, is one very long personal journey, an experiment of transforming ourselves and learning about ourselves. That transformation and learning cannot happen in one day. Part of that learning is to try something and see how it changes us, then try something again and see how it changes. The temptation can always be there to go to extremes, to try so many things at once. But if you can be more patient in that process, you can learn about each thing and what effect it has upon you. There are people here who have been on their yoga journey much longer than I have. They have such experience of their self and how they react to situations: how to prepare for the Anuṣṭhān, how to help their bodies in certain situations, how to practice differently in winter or summer, when working or on holiday. This all comes from experience, from practice, and from observing again and again. People will have their ways of sitting; they will know that when their body is in a certain condition, it is easy to sit one way, and at other times, another way. You learn which prāṇāyāma helps you when you are upset, down, depressed, happy, or angry. This all comes constantly from observing, from trying and observing. At the start, I spoke of listening to yourself, listening to what is going on inside. So often, our body is trying to tell us something, to give us a message, but because we're already thinking of something else, we don't hear it. There can be times when your body is telling you not to do something, to stop, because it will cause damage at that moment. But to come to that relationship with your body and mind takes time and discipline: constantly practicing, constantly observing. Śrī Dīpanārāyaṇ Bhagavān kī Satguru Deva kī. We were talking about surfing, about the wave and how it functions. I was enjoying that. This morning in meditation, when Swāmījī was guiding, he said at one point, "Concentrate on the form of God which you like, whether it be unmanifest or manifest form." This is the question Arjuna asked Kṛṣṇa in the 12th chapter of the Bhagavad Gītā: which one should we meditate on? Which is better? Kṛṣṇa says it is better to meditate on the manifest form because it is easier, as it is so hard to comprehend the unmanifest form. I've always thought of it this way: I don't know if anyone has tried to feed a big apple to a horse. If you put a big apple in front of a horse, they can't eat it because their mouth doesn't open that wide. They'll just chase it round and round with their nose. But cut the apple in half, and it's gone within seconds because it fits into the mouth. In the same way, that whole apple is there, and that unmanifest God is there. But for us to grasp it, we have, as Swāmījī says, nirguṇa se saguṇe, they are Mahāprabhujī. It is the same, but in a more focused form that we can grasp and contemplate. Now let me try to explain it from a surfing perspective. When a wave comes to the shore, there is a point where it reaches shallower water. The wave is always there, coming from far away. Near the beach, the shallowness means the bottom part slows down due to friction, while the top continues at the same speed. So it starts level, then slowly the top starts to go faster. When surfing, you don't wait until it's crashing to catch the wave, because then there's not enough slope to take you. There comes a certain point, as you're paddling to stay on the wave, where the slope and speed of the top part start to take you, rather than you having to stay on it. It's a subtle moment; you just feel that now your work is over and the wave is taking over. I never really thought about it before, but it's a beautiful way of experiencing that same thing: when you finally let go in your meditation and suddenly something else takes over. It may be just for moments; it may come at the extreme of your practice when you're exhausted. Using it as an analogy, that is like Mahāprabhujī taking you further from that point. It is an acknowledgment that at some point, that energy will take you toward the shore. In the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa says you can also go towards the unmanifest, but it's much more difficult. It's exactly the same principle in the ocean. You can paddle and swim all the way back to shore, but it takes a long time, and all the time you'll be smashed by waves because you'll go past the point where they've broken and it's very rough. In ocean swimming races, they have to decide: do they wait for a wave, or try to swim in? You can't make both choices. Once you go past a certain point toward the shore, you can't catch those waves because you can't be on top of them. If you choose to swim the whole way, you have to swim the whole way. Often, someone winning by a long way will be caught from behind by someone who waited for a wave and just flies past them without any effort. Once you are on top of the wave and it takes you, it is only by your own will that you come off. You basically don't have to do much at all. Without a board, you just put one hand in front, keep your head up to breathe, and just go. That, I would guess, is an Australian way of expressing what Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad Gītā. If Kṛṣṇa had been surfing, he would have said that. That moment when you let go—as Kṛṣṇa also says in the twelfth chapter: jñāna is better than practice, and meditation is better than jñāna, but letting go of the fruits of your actions is better than meditation. Because it is that: when we let go and let that wave take us, let Mahāprabhujī take us in our meditation, it is when we let Him take us toward that shore. As it's always said in the bhajans, He can take us across the ocean of ignorance. In some way, we can do it in style on the board and go to the shore. He can take us there. Think about your own experience. When the moment comes that the wave starts to take you, at that point in time, there is a certain moment where the wave is at a very steep slope. One can pull back off it, or trust in yourself that you'll balance and just go with it. It is that point where śraddhā is so much required—trust in Mahāprabhujī and trust in yourself—and then the only thing to do is to stay balanced on that way, stay balanced and breathe. One very small point about this bhajan and rāja dena guru. In Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras, when talking about tamas and rajas, the word rajas also comes from the same root as the rajas in the dust of the feet. I read in one commentary that rajas is that which obscures the sattva. In the same way that dust obscures the light or stops you from seeing what is around—like in a dust storm—in the same way, the rajas guṇa obscures the sattva guṇa. It makes it difficult to see, like when you disturb water and can't see the bottom. So put that together with the bhajan: if there should be a rājasika guṇa, if we're doing something, then let it be the savor of the guru, the savor of his feet. And if we have the rājasika guṇa, then let it be in the service of the guru, the service of his feet.