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Kīche, Satguru Deva, kīche. Should I tell the story? Very well. But you must listen carefully. I sometimes forget names, how many people there were, and where they were. Gajanandjī and I are part of a club called the Forgetful Club. We always forget what we’ve been saying, so you have to remember. For those who were here last week, I spoke briefly about this story. So if you were here last week, kindly join our club. And if you forget what you heard last week, it will all be new. Have you ever heard of Viṣṇu? Yes. This is a story about Viṣṇu, Mahā Viṣṇu. It is about one man, a rākṣasa, named Hiraṇyakaśipu. You must remember that name because I often forget it. Can you say it? Hiraṇya. Hiraṇyakaśipu. For some reason, which we will not discuss, he was extremely, extremely angry with Viṣṇu. He wanted to catch him and put him in jail. This is the slightly Ahiṃsā version. He wanted to catch him and then imprison him. But Viṣṇu was Viṣṇu, a very, very powerful god. Hiraṇyakaśipu had no chance to catch him. So Hiraṇyakaśipu went into the forest and began to perform tapasyā. He sat and meditated. He meditated for weeks, months, and years without moving—no eating, no drinking, no chocolate, no television, and no school. As he meditated more and more, everything grew hot. He meditated so intensely that the whole world began to get hot. Eventually, it grew so hot that everyone feared the world would catch fire. The gods held a meeting. Nowadays it would be by Skype, but there was no Skype then. They decided that Brahmā would go and tell Hiraṇyakaśipu to stop making it so hot. Who was going to talk to him? You really must listen carefully. Do you remember? Brahmā. So Brahmā went to speak to Hiraṇyakaśipu. He found him sitting in meditation and asked, "Hiraṇyakaśipu, what are you doing?" Hiraṇyakaśipu replied, "I am meditating until you give me a gift. Only when you give me what I want will I stop, and then I will stop it from getting so hot." Brahmā asked, "What do you want?" He said, "I want to be the strongest and most powerful person in the whole world, not just this world but in all the worlds, so I can be king of all the worlds and then catch Viṣṇu and put him in my jail." Brahmā said, "But that’s not possible." Hiraṇyakaśipu said, "Then I’ll keep meditating, and the world will burn." The meditation grew hotter and hotter; already, some trees in the forest were starting to catch fire. He insisted, "I’ll keep making it hotter and hotter." Brahmā pleaded, "Ask for something else, but not that. Please stop." Hiraṇyakaśipu refused: "No, no... only that. You must give me that gift." Eventually, Brahmā thought, "If I don’t give it to him, everything will burn." So he said, "Okay, okay, I’ll give you that blessing. You will be the strongest in the whole world and in all worlds." Now Hiraṇyakaśipu was very, very strong. And, of course, he began to search for whom? Well done! Ten out of ten—he tried to find Viṣṇu, Mahāviṣṇu. He searched all around the world but could not find him. Meanwhile, Brahmā returned to the other gods and told them what had happened. The gods said, "This is a problem. If he catches Viṣṇu and puts him in jail, who will do Viṣṇu’s job? He maintains the whole universe. Who will do it?" They told Viṣṇu, and he said, "No problem, I know what to do." But the other gods said, "But don’t you know Hiraṇyakaśipu has such a blessing that he’s much stronger than you? If he catches you, he will put you in jail. Where will you hide? He can go everywhere. He received the blessing to go to all worlds. He can go inside the earth, up into the sky; he can look everywhere for you. You cannot hide." Viṣṇu said, "No, no, don’t worry. I know where to hide, where I will never be found." The next night, when Hiraṇyakaśipu was sleeping, Viṣṇu sneaked up to him. Viṣṇu could make himself very small or very big whenever he liked. He made himself very, very small and went inside Hiraṇyakaśipu, hiding within his heart. He thought, "Now he cannot find me." Hiraṇyakaśipu looked everywhere around the world for Viṣṇu. He went down into the earth but could not find him there. He went up into the sky and checked among the stars. All the time he thought, "Now I’ll find him. He must be hiding here." Have you ever played hide and seek? Everybody hides, and you have to try to find them. For Hiraṇyakaśipu, it was like that, but a very big game. Can you imagine playing a game where someone could hide anywhere, not just in Stillfried, but anywhere in the whole of Europe? Do you think you could find them? It would take time. But Hiraṇyakaśipu was so fast; he checked everything quickly. He checked here, down below, up in the sky, and even in the heavens where the gods were. He kept thinking, "Now I will find him." But of course he could not, because where was Viṣṇu? In the heart—yes, he was hiding inside him. Hiraṇyakaśipu did not think to look there. Finally, after searching and searching, he decided Viṣṇu must already be dead. It occurred to him that Viṣṇu probably was no more because he had checked everywhere in the whole world—under every stone, in every cave, in every tree, even on the ocean floor. If he could not find him by now, he must not be there anymore. He decided, "Okay, no more. We don’t need to find Viṣṇu." Then he began to build his palace and become king of the world. And Viṣṇu waited and waited. That is the end of today’s story. The other part is for another time. So where is Viṣṇu? The rest of the story you already know. Tomorrow, perhaps we will have it there, in the Kathā Hall. You all know the story after that—the story of Hiraṇyakaśipu and Prahlāda. It comes after. But this story comes before; it is like the prelude. Last week in the Upaniṣads, the same concept constantly arose: that the Supreme, Paramātmā, is hidden within the heart, the size of a thumb, hidden in the cave of the heart. Ten svrchovaný Paramātmā se skrývá v srdci. This story is a beautiful, beautiful way of expressing that same thing. Hiraṇyakaśipu represents those senses, like horses, looking everywhere, searching around externally. Hiraṇyakaśipu to sou ty smysly, jako dneska. All the time, what we are really searching for, what he is really searching for, is inside us. It is already there. Viṣṇu knew that Hiraṇyakaśipu, as a rākṣasa with all those tendencies of looking externally and being in māyā, had no chance of looking inside. He was completely safe there. No matter how long Hiraṇyakaśipu searched, he would not find Him. And it is our job to turn our senses inside, to withdraw from being so caught in māyā. It is not our job; it is our aim, so we can find that God within all of us. To, co znovu a znovu popisuje Katha Upaniṣad. I wanted to return to this morning. A bit later, I was talking with someone after the satsaṅg. We were discussing how you must always keep some tension on the reins, maintain some control of the horses. That awareness must be there all the time. It is something you cannot just turn on and off. Yoga is part of life. Sometimes you may think, "I’ll take a break for a few days," but it just does not function. Once you start, there is no break. I thought of another way to explain it. It is like being a vegetarian. You cannot say, "I’m a vegetarian, but only six days per week; on the seventh day I’ll have a break." Then you are not a vegetarian. If you are a vegetarian, you are a vegetarian your whole life. The same with yoga. If you are a yogī, a practitioner of yoga, it is not something you do four or five days a week and then take a weekend break. You may not do the same practice, but the yogic awareness must always be there. Whole life is a practice. Every moment of the day is part of that practice. You cannot turn it off and back on. You may adjust the intensity up or down according to your time and capacity, but once that light has been lit inside—once Swāmījī has lit that light—it is a light that must constantly burn. There is a small story. Some men, who were a little bit stupid, lived in a village. Three or four of them always gathered together. They went on an adventure, walking together. They came to a river with no way to cross. They had to either swim or walk across, but none could swim. They sat on the riverbank discussing the problem. The discussion went on and on. Then one said, "It’s quite simple. The first part of the river is only this deep, then after some time it gets this deep. In the middle, it is very deep—ten or twelve feet. I know." Of course, he did not know; he was only guessing. "On the other side, again, it will be shallow. So, on average, it will only be this deep. Therefore, if we walk across, it will be no problem; the water will only come up to our knees." The group, not endowed with much intelligence among them, thought this was the work of a genius. They all started to walk into the river together. None could swim, and of course, when they reached the middle, they all drowned because it was too deep. You cannot just say, "Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, so on average, I practice." Those days when you completely forget about practicing are the ones that drag you down, bringing you back to that lower level. Then you know how much work it is to bring your awareness back up. If you let the horses, as discussed this morning, go too free and run after anything they like, it becomes very difficult to bring them back onto the path. Just as those men could not swim and the river was too deep for them, our practice can be completely lost. In some form, we must keep our practice going every day, maintaining our connection with our real purpose in this life—the real purpose of being human. When you lose that purpose, when you lose the knowledge of why you are here and why you are practicing, you start running around doing whatever happens here or there. Like horses running around a chariot, seeing green grass and running here and there, the whole direction is lost. Without consciousness of your aim and goal, it reminds me of flying everywhere only to collect frequent flyer points. You do not actually need to go anywhere. A lot of energy is wasted going here and there, trying this and that, but nothing comes from it because the goal, the destination, is not there. Swāmījī has given us our practice and our direction. Now it is in our hands to practice every day, to put it into practice all our life, to let that mantra and that teaching ring like a song throughout everything we do. So that our mantra, our practice, sounds like a song for everything we do. It is a very short thing. Sometimes it takes twenty years to understand one Guruvākya. And Guruvākya can sometimes also be like a joke. Just a few minutes before I came to the satsaṅg, I think I understood such a Guruvākya. I came up to the staircase, and Hīrapurī asked me, "Are you going to speak this evening?" I said, "I don’t know, maybe." Then he said, "Personally?" You know why I mention this? Because that is exactly a joke Swāmījī has made with me for at least twenty years. Now Hīrapurī repeated it, and for some reason, I suddenly understood it. I explained to him: in school, I learned Latin. "Personally" comes from the word "person." In German, we say "Person," which comes from the Latin verb "personāre." "Per" means through, and "sonāre" means sound. You know the word "sonata," the music form. So "personāre" means the sound that goes through, like a sound that goes through a flute. That is it. We have to become "personally"—not what we speak, but just the sound goes through. We must become a channel so that what we speak is not from us. In other words, "Nāham kartā, Harīḥ kartā." So let’s become personators. Let’s become such personalities.