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Hari Om. Yogesh Ji said last week that Strupki was heaven. So, according to that song from last night, I guess I’m already in heaven. I should say ‘good day’—an Australian way of saying hello. We’re very hungry in Australia, so we eat half of our words. The news from Jadan: it rained last night, all night. Not heavily, but it was continuous, so it’s quite wet around. The water isn’t reaching the talāb (pond) yet, but it’s good. The atmosphere has changed quite a lot. It’s still cloudy, and there’s no wind, which is the most important thing. It may rain again today or tomorrow. Even this amount of rain, if it doesn’t fill the talāb, makes grass. It makes such a difference. As it was, there was nothing for the animals to eat and nothing for drinking. It was becoming quite a crisis, as you could hear when Swāmījī was asking on Skype where to take water from. The worst I ever saw was one year, maybe ten years ago. It was a severe drought. We were delivering water to other villages with four or five tractors, just for drinking water. The problem was finding a water source to deliver to a village. It was a constant cycle: every week we’d find a new source, maybe 10 or 15 kilometers from the village. We’d arrange electricity for the pump, set up the tank, and after a week or two, that source would start to dry up and we’d search for another. This continued all summer. We ended up bringing water to Jadan from about 40 or 50 kilometers away. Probably the most serious water problem in our area is fluoride. In some villages, the fluoride content is so high. You may have seen children in India with completely red-yellow teeth. It’s not because they started chewing tobacco at age five; it’s a sign of fluorosis, the disease from too much fluoride. It destroys teeth and is especially destructive to bones. The children’s teeth deteriorate quickly. According to what I read, there is one traditional way to stop fluoride from going into the bones and teeth, which people used without realizing it: one fruit, tamarind. In Hindi, it’s called imlī. It’s used a lot in South Indian cooking, put in the dal. In our area, they used to drink it in the summer because it’s very cooling. Of course, now instead of imlī, they drink Pepsi, which doesn’t have the same effect. The imlī somehow stops the fluoride from going into the bones. This was discovered in South India. American scientists were studying why some villages had fluorosis problems while others did not, even with the same water quality. They found that in villages where it was more serious, they were using tomato in their dal instead of tamarind, as both are sour. Tomato is not a traditional Indian vegetable; it was introduced more recently. The villages that switched to tomato instead of imlī had the problems. Laboratory tests confirmed that imlī somehow catches the fluoride and prevents it from going to the bones. So the solution is already there, but over time, we forget. I try to tell this in the village, but nobody wants to go back to imlī; it’s too much trouble. In the ashram, we always have it for drinking in the summer, and it’s great—so cooling. It may not be as sweet as other things, but it’s excellent. So, rain makes a huge difference to the whole area. I want to read a story from the Līlā Amṛt. At one stage, when Swamiji was mentioning the Upanishads and Līlā Amṛt, I thought, “Soon I’ll be carrying a whole library to the satsaṅg.” Here is a short story: Śrīdīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya. We return to an earlier time in Bhagavān Śrī Nārāyaṇa Mahāprabhujī’s blessed life. After the monsoon season one year, he stayed in Jodhpur. He was invited to the village of Nāḍol by the ironsmith Cimṇā Rāmjī (a blacksmith) and by Lhaka Rāmjī. After several days of glorious satsaṅg, Ṭhākur Raghunāth Siṅghjī, a humble devotee of Gurudev, came to invite him to his village, Keśā Siṅghjī (Swāmījī often has programs there). Due to his and his family’s faith and devotion, most of the village was inspired to take mantra dīkṣā from Mahāprabhujī. One day, Ṭhākur Raghunāth Siṅghjī was thinking about useful things he could give to Mahāprabhujī to take back to his ashram, and chilies occurred to him. Dear readers, chili peppers are a substantial and important household staple in India. Unless you have been around an Indian kitchen, you cannot imagine the quantities of red and green pods that disappear daily into cooking pots. But then the Ṭhākur thought with dismay: this year they are terribly expensive because the drought has made them scarce, and they hadn’t gotten any from their farm for the same reason. Mahāprabhujī read his thoughts and said, “Why worry about that? In Gurudev’s presence, anything is possible. Which field did you last harvest chilies from? Come, let me take a look.” He went with Ṭhākur Raghunāth Siṅghjī to the field. Raghunāth Siṅghjī said it had been two years since they had last been able to grow chilies. When they arrived, they saw nothing but dried-up stalks. Despite a few rains, nothing had come up, and even the roots had been eaten by insects. Mahāprabhujī looked around and said, “This is fine. Just water the field and see what happens.” The Ṭhākur couldn’t imagine anything would happen, but he didn’t dare ignore Mahāprabhujī’s command. He watered the field of dead stalks as carefully as though they were freshly planted. And chilies grew there in superabundance. Once, Śrī Nārāyaṇa Mahāprabhujī, when asked to explain this miracle, said, “Dear brother, the garden of Gurudev is evergreen. To keep it fresh requires only water—the water of love and devotion. We are all flowers in the Heavenly Father’s garden, where we grow and thrive if we but turn our hearts to receive His benevolent light.” Śrīdīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya. Satguru Deva Kī Jaya. In the bhajan “Huāgurū Deva,” there is a verse talking about the same point: you have such a beautiful garden within, but it just has to be watered with love, and then it will continue to grow. If you do any watering, let it be that type of watering. You may be here now, refreshing your practice after a whole year has gone by. I’m sure you’ve had the experience that when you’re here, or when you’ve come previously to Swamiji, although your practice may have been down before you came, it again flourishes and grows. It’s never too late to put water again on your practice, on your yoga practice. It’s never too late to again water that which you think may even be gone, may not be there anymore. It’s better to continuously water and continuously harvest. But as Mahāprabhujī says, it’s evergreen; it can always grow. It’s just up to us to keep putting that water of love inside. There’s a story from this year about the Nepal Ashram and the well outside Gurujī’s room. Many people are here this week, so let me tell it. There was a well outside Gurujī’s room that many remember, with a hand pump just a few meters from his residence door. When there was water, he would always send someone to pump water for his bathing. For quite some years, it had been completely dry, and nobody gave it any chance of having water again. Swāmījī was there, I think in May, and they were discussing filling it, covering it, and cleaning the area (there’s quite a transformation in Nepal that you’ll see next time; Gurujī’s Mahāsamādhi function will be in Nepal this year as it’s now ready for many people). They were discussing filling this open well, which is quite wide. Swāmījī said, “Is there somebody who can dig it down a little further? We can see if there’s water.” Someone was arranged. They started to work, digging down 20 feet further. The first ten feet were soft, but after that, it was granite—very hard rock. The hills around Nepal are all stone, and this was granite. They had to drill holes, put in gunpowder, and make explosions. The routine was: in the morning, they would remove the debris from yesterday’s blasting, drill new holes, put in gunpowder, and blast in the evening so it would settle by morning. When they reached 22 feet, it was still completely dry, with no sign of water. Swāmījī said, “Just go a few feet more.” He set a target of 25 feet, as I remember. At 2:00 AM, they did the blasting. In the morning, there was 20 feet of water inside. That can happen when digging a well; water comes in. Normally, it’s a little bit, and they pump it out to continue working. They bought a big pump, started removing the water, filled all the tanks in Nepal, watered all the gardens and trees. They ran the pump 24 hours and still couldn’t lower the water level. It was as if a plug had been opened and an underground water source flowed. Swamiji just said, “Oh, really? Vážně?” This relates to many stories in yoga about digging and then giving up and digging somewhere else. In our practice, you may feel your well is dry, that you’re doing something but no change is happening. You just don’t know when that moment comes, when that plug opens. Swamiji said to dig the well there; they dug, and the water was there. The practice we’ve been given is because there’s something there when we do it. We keep doing it because you don’t know if today is the day it will happen, or tomorrow, or in 10 minutes, 10 years, or 50 years. Even if we practice for 40 or 50 years, in the span of our lives, it’s not that long. There was no sign of water—no wetness, no trickle—until the moment the plug opened. That trust has to be there: what Swāmījī has given us to do will bring fruit. Like Ṭhākur Sāhib had the trust to put water, which must have been very valuable that drought year, onto that field of dry chilies. Thank you for watching. God bless you. God bless you. Yesterday we spoke about the bhajan of the chariot driven by ten horses, symbolizing the ten indriyas (sense organs). We spoke theoretically about how to control our senses. Mahāprabhujī is obviously very present. I was laughing this morning in the Kriyā Anuṣṭhān program; he said, “OK, let us follow the theory with practice,” because workers started making lots of noise just when we were practicing—good practice in Pratyāhāra, no? I spoke with Vivek Purī, the organizer, about what we could do. The first practice in the morning is fine, as workers aren’t there yet. He suggested for the afternoon we could practice outside. I think that’s a very good idea: on the tennis field, there’s a plain area big enough for everyone, with fresh air. If it rains, we go to Plan B. Therefore, please, the Kriyā Anuṣṭhān group today—we’ll see about tomorrow—today we will meet at 1:30 PM on the tennis field near Swāmījī’s house. I hope they can stop the work for that one hour in the morning when we have our practice. I promised yesterday, or said I intended to tell a story about the sense organs. This bhajan says that two sense organs are very tricky and control the whole world. Only perfect yogīs can control all the sense organs, but two are especially difficult: the organ of reproduction (sexuality) and taste. Nobody can stop them because they produce wishes and passions. These senses are powerful in everyone: in the gods like Brahmā, Indra, the Devas; in humans; in the Asuras; and in birds and animals. In fact, these two senses control the whole world. Acharam says those who defeated them could get God-realization, and “I do my praṇām to them, because they have conquered what otherwise conquers the whole world.” I would like to tell a small story that sheds light on why these two senses are so significant. This is a story to which I have a personal relation. Shortly before I became Swami, it was already clear I would become Swami. What did Gajānanjī do? Go into a partnership? He knew something was not so, but it happened. Then Swamiji came. Usually, he came to Hamburg only for weekend seminars and started straight away. But that time, he came one day earlier, so before the official program, we had an internal satsaṅg. In that satsaṅg, Swāmījī told this story, which was straight away aimed at us. I don’t remember the exact beginning; I think it was about Ṛṣi Nārada or another great saint. He was annoyed that Kāmadeva, the lord of passion, always made trouble for yogīs. He said, “I will conquer you.” Kāmadeva replied, “I will ride you,” meaning “I will suppress you.” Nārada sat down for meditation—a great ṛṣi, strong tapasyā. He sat from morning till evening, much stronger than Swamiji’s original suggested version of Kriyānusthāna. There was no question of mauna, food, or fasting; he did nothing except meditation, with a firm will. Only once per day he got up to search for a little piece of bark or root to bite. He gained strong power and had strong, uninterrupted discipline. A girl from the next village saw him and felt compassion. She thought, “This man has nothing to eat; he is doing tapasya. I will give him a little prasāda.” She made something like halva and, observing him, put it on the tree where he went to take a piece of bark. She glued it there. The next time Ṛṣi Nārada had his short break for food, he saw it on the tree. He tasted it—nice, sweet—and thought, “God’s prasāda; a special blessing today,” and continued his sādhanā. The next day, it was there again. He thought, “Double prasāda, thank you,” and continued. On the third day, it was there again. Now his mind started functioning: “There must be something. How does it get there?” That was the first distraction in his meditation. The next day, he found it again and started looking around. No one was visible. He meditated, and the next day thought, “Maybe I stop my meditation a little earlier to catch sight of the person who brings this.” But there was no one, and the sweet was there. So every day he cut his meditation a little shorter, stopping earlier, hoping to see the person. One day, he saw a shadow rushing away. He thought, “A little earlier, and I will get them.” The next day, stopping half an hour earlier, he saw the girl. Now he had a second impression: how beautiful and young she is. The next day, he stopped half an hour earlier again for a better view. Then, 45 minutes earlier to meet her. He went to her and said, “Oh, you are the one who always brings me prasāda. That’s very kind. I thank you.” The girl said, “Yes, my grandfather told me it’s good to serve the sādhus.” It became a habit; every day they talked a little. She didn’t need to glue it on the tree anymore; she gave it directly to him. She also brought a little more to make him happier, so there was more disturbance in his fasting discipline. Slowly, his senses became more active, and his meditation was not so strong anymore. Until one day he gathered courage and asked her, “Are you married?” She said, “No.” He asked, “Would you like to be my wife?” She said, “You have to ask my father, my parents.” He said, “Tomorrow, can I come with you?” The next day, he went with her to the family. They said, “That’s a nice young guy. Why not?” They gave permission. Then it was about the marriage ceremony, which in India is a big deal. The girl said to Nārada, “You know, we have a special habit here in our village only.” He asked, “What’s that?” She said, “In our village, on the day of marriage, the husband carries the future wife on his back through the whole village.” He said, “That’s fine with me. I love you; I will carry you happily through the whole village and show you.” On that day, they prepared. He took her on his shoulders and started walking through the village. At that moment, the girl changed her form. It had all been a māyā of God Kāmadeva, the god of passion. He beat him and said, “Look up.” Nārada looked up at his girl and was shocked to see Kāmadeva sitting on his back. Kāmadeva said, “I told you I will ride you.” That was the story Swāmījī told us. It had a clear message; one could not mistake it. It came to my mind now because it beautifully explains the connection between these two senses: taste and sexuality. For the end, I would like to sing with you this bhajan, “Indriya.” (The bhajan lyrics are sung and included as spoken.) Did you have a good lunch? Good day. Have a great day.