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Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān, Kī Jaya, Satguru Dev, Kī Jaya. Should I tell the story? Okay. Really? But you have to listen carefully. I sometimes forget the names of people, how many of them there were, and where they were. Sir, Gajanandjī and I are part of one 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 briefly talked 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. Okay. Have you ever heard of Viṣṇu? Yes. This is a story about Viṣṇu, Mahāviṣṇu. And it’s about one man, one Rākṣasa, and his name was Hiraṇyakaśipu. You have to remember that name because I often forget it. Can you say it? Hiraṇya? Hiraṇya? Kaśyapa. Kashyapa. Okay, we’ll see. Hiraṇyakaśipu, for some reason, which we will not discuss, was extremely, extremely angry with Viṣṇu, and he wanted to catch him and put him in jail. This is the slightly Ahiṃsā version. He wanted to catch him and then put him in jail. So Viṣṇu was Viṣṇu. He was a very, very, very powerful god. And Hiraṇyakaśipu had no chance to catch him. So Hiraṇyakaśipu went into the forest and started to do tapasyā. He started to sit there and do meditation. And he was meditating there for weeks and months and years. A rock. Without moving. No eating. No drinking. I did not drink. No chocolate. No television. And no school. And he was meditating and meditating, and as he was meditating more and more, everything was getting hot. And he was meditating so much that the whole world started to get hot. And eventually, it was getting so hot that everyone was scared that the world would catch on fire. So then the gods had a meeting. Nowadays it would be by Skype, but there was no Skype then. And they had a meeting, and they decided that Brahmā would go and talk to Hiraṇyakaśipu and tell him to stop making it so hot. And so they decided that Brahmā would go after Hiraṇyakaśyapa and talk to him so that he would stop meditating, so that he would stop emitting that terrible fire. Who is going to talk to him? Do you remember? And who is going to talk to him? You really have to listen carefully. Do you remember? Brahmā. Brahmā. So Brahmā went down to talk to Hiraṇyakaśipu. And he went there, and Hiraṇyakaśyapa was sitting, doing his meditation, and Brahmā said to him, “Hiraṇyakaśyapa, what are you doing?” He said, “I’m meditating until you give me a gift.” And he said, “I meditate until you give me a gift.” And only when you give me what I want, then I’ll stop it, and then I’ll stop it from getting so hot. And Brahmā said, “What do you want?” He said, “I want to be the strongest and the most powerful person in the whole world.” And not just in this world, but in all the worlds. So that I can be king of all the worlds, and then I can catch Viṣṇu. And put him in my jail. Brahmā said, “But that’s not possible.” And Hiraṇyakaśipu said, “Then I’ll keep meditating, and the world will burn.” And it was getting hotter and hotter. Already, some of the trees were starting to catch fire. In the forest where he was. And he said, “I’ll keep doing it. I’ll keep making it hotter and hotter.” And Brahmā said, “Ask for something else, but not that. Stop it.” And Hedaṇa Kāśyapa said, “No, no, only that, you have to give me that gift.” Eventually, Brahmā thought, “If I don’t give him, then everything’s going to burn.” So he said, “Okay, okay, I’ll give you that blessing, that you will be the strongest in the whole world and in all the worlds.” So now Hiraṇyakaśipu was very, very strong. And, of course, he started to look, to try and find who? Well done! Ten out of ten to try and find Viṣṇu, Mahāviṣṇu. He was searching all around the world, but he couldn’t find him. In the meantime, Brahmā went back up to all of the other gods. And he told them what had happened. And the gods said, “Hmm, this is a problem. If he catches Viṣṇu and puts him in jail, then who will do Viṣṇu’s job? He takes care of everything. He maintains the whole universe. Who will do it?” And they told Viṣṇu, and he said, “No, no problem, I know what to do.” But the other gods said, “But don’t you know that Hiraṇyakaśipu has such a blessing that he is much stronger than you? If he catches you, he will put you in jail.” Viṣṇu said, “It’s no problem, I will hide.” And the other gods said, “Where will you hide? He can go everywhere. He got the blessing that he could go to all the worlds. He can go inside the earth, he can go up into the sky, he can look everywhere for you. You can’t hide.” Viṣṇu could make himself very small and also very, very, very big whenever he liked. So he made himself very, very small. And then he went inside Hiraṇyakaśipu, and he hid inside his heart. He thought, “Okay, now he can’t find me.” Hiraṇyakaśipu was looking everywhere around the world for Viṣṇu. Then he went down into the earth, but he also couldn’t find him there. Then he went up into the sky and checked in the sky and among the stars. And all the time he was thinking, “Now I’ll find him.” He must be hiding here. Have you ever played hide-and-seek? Everybody hides, and then you have to try and find them. Well, for Hiraṇyakaśipu it was like that, but it’s a very big game. Can you imagine if you were playing that game and somebody could hide anywhere, not in Śrīlākṣyāśram, but anywhere in the whole of Europe? Do you think you could find them? It would take some time. But Hiraṇyakaśipu was so fast, he could check everything so fast. He was checking here, he was checking down, then he went up into the sky, and then he went to the heavens and checked where the gods were. And all the time he’s thinking, “Now I will find him, now I will find him.” But of course he couldn’t find him, because where was he? Where? In the heart, yes, he was hiding inside him. And he didn’t think to look there. Finally, he was going around and around, searching and searching and searching. And he decided that Viṣṇu must already be dead. Because he knew that he had checked everywhere in the whole world. He checked under every stone, in every cave, in every tree. He even checked on the bottom of the ocean. So if he couldn’t find him by now, he must not be there anymore. And then he decided, “Okay, no more, we don’t need to find Viṣṇu.” And then he started to make his palace and to become the king of the world. And Viṣṇu was waiting and waiting and waiting. And that’s the end of today’s story. The other part of the story is for another time. So, where is Viṣṇu? The rest of the story you already know. Tomorrow. Maybe we’ll have it there, okay? In the car to hold. You all know the story after that. Hiraṇyakaśipu and Prahlāda come after. But this story comes before that. It’s like the prelude. Last week in the Upaniṣads, constantly the same concept was coming up, that the supreme, that Paramātmā, is hidden inside the heart, the size of the thumb, and hidden in the cave of the heart. And this story somehow is a beautiful, beautiful way of expressing that same thing. Hiraṇyakaśipu is like those senses today, looking everywhere, searching around everywhere outside. And all the time, what we’re really searching for and what he is really searching for is inside us. It’s already there. Viṣṇu knows that Hiraṇyakaśipu, as a Rākṣasa, with all of those tendencies of looking to the external and being in māyā, has no chance of looking inside. Viṣṇu knows that all those who are entangled in māyā, those who are going out, do not have the tendency to turn inside. He is completely safe there. No matter how long Hiraṇyakaśipu will search, he is not going to find. And it’s our job to turn our senses inside, to withdraw ourselves from being caught so much in māyā. It’s not our job, it’s our aim, so that we can find that which is within, that God which is within all of us. That which is described in the Upaniṣad again and again. I find that really a beautiful, beautiful part of the story. I wanted to go back to this morning. A bit later, I was talking with someone after the satsaṅg. And you were discussing, if you remember, we were talking about how you always have to keep some tension on the reins, like keep some control of the horses. And that awareness must be there all the time. It’s something that you cannot just turn on and turn off. Yoga is a part of life. Sometimes you may think, “I’ll have a break for a few days,” but it just doesn’t function. Once you start, there is no break. And I was thinking of another way to explain it. It’s like being a vegetarian. You can’t say, “I’m a vegetarian, but I’m only a vegetarian six days per week, and on the seventh day I’ll have a break.” Then you’re not a vegetarian. If you’re a vegetarian, you’re a vegetarian the whole of your life. And the same with yoga. If you’re a yogī, if you’re a practitioner of yoga, it’s not something that you do four or five days per week and then have a break for the weekend. You may not do the same practice, but the awareness, that yogic awareness, it has to always be there. Whole life is a practice. Every moment of the day is practice. But it’s a light that has to constantly burn. There’s one small story. There were some men, and they were a little bit stupid. They lived in a village, and they collected together; three or four of them always. They lived in a village, and they always met, three or four of them, and they went on an adventure. They went walking together, and they came to a river, and there was no way to cross the river. They had to either swim or walk across, but none of them could swim. So they were sitting on the bank of this river and discussing the problem. And the discussion was going on, and then one of them said, “No, it’s quite simple. The first part of this river is only this deep. And then, after some time, it gets this deep only. In the middle, it’s very deep. So, therefore, as it is, on average, only this deep, if we walk across it, it will be no problem; it will only come up to our knees.” The group, not being endowed with a lot of intelligence between them, thought that was the work of a genius. And they all started to walk into the river together. None of them could swim. And of course, when they got to the middle, they all drowned. Because they couldn’t swim, and 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, those are the ones that drag you down, and you come down to that level again. And then again, you know how much work it is to bring it back up, to bring your awareness back up. And if one lets, as was said in the morning, the horses go too free and run after anything they like, then it’s very, very difficult to bring them back onto the path. In the same way, those men couldn’t swim, and it was too deep for them. It can go completely. In some form, in some way, we must keep our practice going every day. Keep our connection with what is our real purpose in this life, what is the real purpose of being a human. When you lose that purpose, when you lose that knowledge of why you’re here and why you’re practicing, like the horses would be running around on that chariot, just seeing green grass, running here and running there, the whole direction in which you’re going gets lost. Somehow, without that consciousness of your aim and your goal, it reminds me of flying everywhere but only in order to collect frequent flyer points. You don’t actually need to go anywhere. A lot of energy gets wasted going here and going there, and trying this and trying that. But nothing is coming from it because the goal isn’t there, the destination isn’t there. And Swamiji has given us our practice, he has given us the direction. And now it’s in our hands to practice that every day, to put it into practice all of our life. To somehow let that mantra and that teaching ring like a song throughout everything that we do. Oṁ Bholē Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Śrī Śrī Devpurīṣī Mahādeva Kī Jaya, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁt Śrī Svayī Maravānanda Purādhī Mahārāja Kī Jaya, Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁt Śrī Svayī Maheśvarānanda Purādhī Sadgurudeva Kī Jaya. They are just a very short thing. Sometimes it takes twenty years to understand one Guruvākya. And Guruvākya can sometimes also be like a joke. I would say just a few minutes before I came to the satsaṅg, I think I understood such a Guruvākya. I came up the staircase, and Hirapurī asked me, “Are you going to speak this evening?” And I said, “I don’t know, maybe.” And then he said, “Personally?” You know why I say that? Because that exactly is the joke which Swamiji has been making with me for at least twenty years. So now Hīrapurī repeated that. And for some reason, suddenly I understood it, and I explained it to him. You know, in school I learned the Latin language. “Personally,” that comes from the word “person.” In German we say Person, and that comes from the Latin verb personare. Per means through, and sonare means sound. You know the word sonata? Sonata. A musical form. So, personare means the sound that goes through. Like a sound that goes through the flute. And that’s it, so we have to become personally. That is not what we speak, but just the sound goes through. We have to become a channel so that what we speak actually is not from us. Or, in other words, Nama Karatā Prabhudīpa Karatā Mahāprabhudīpa Karatā He Kevalam Oṁ Ti Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ. So, let’s become personators. Puri Jī, Siddha Purānanda Puri Jī, Siddha Purānanda...