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First, happy birthday to Hemlata from Debrecen. Did anyone else have a birthday in the last two days? We didn’t announce any. Oh, an important one. It goes together with the cloth; the box and the cloth are the same color. That’s good. When Tiāg Purījī was talking about the lady who was swimming and won the gold medal in the Olympics, it was so interesting to hear how yoga is used there. I guess they are searching for differences of just seconds to be able to win medals, and through breathing practices, you find some seconds. But you can’t help but wonder what she’d do if she had a mantra. Whenever I see athletes like that, it’s a great tapasyā, no doubt. But what keeps going through my mind is: what a fantastic potential yogī. Imagine if she would put that same energy, that same effort into practicing. What could happen? There are such qualities that we wish to have in ourselves in yoga: to have the determination and decision to do something, and to keep going and to do something so perfectly. It’s just a matter of which way that energy is turned, as to what it can produce. While Tiāg Purījī was talking, I was trying to think of a saying they have in India, but I can’t remember it, I’m sorry. But anyway, its meaning is that everyone’s greatest strength can also be their greatest weakness. And that the same wind which fans the fire, which makes the fire bigger, also blows out the candle. Within all of us, there are those qualities, and it’s a question of which way they’re directed. Those same things which may be our greatest weakness can also be the thing that can take us very, very far, and those things which are our greatest strength can also take us very far in the wrong direction. In Satsaṅg, Gajānandjī was talking about this bhajan with the horses and the reins to control them: Sāḍobāī, aja barāta hamārā. The reins control the direction in which those horses go. Our senses go, our mind goes, everything goes, you know? When you look at certain qualities we have in ourselves, we may find them not good, but if they can be turned around another way, they’re really something special. For instance, someone may be very accepting of everybody else. Accepting? Yes, accepting. For example, someone is very accepting of others. In one way, it’s a strength. It’s a beautiful thing to have. But misused, it can just promote laziness, because you can be very, very accepting of yourself: "Oh, I didn’t do anything today. It’s okay." At the other end of the scale, you can have anger. But when you look at anger, what is it? It’s a frustration about something not going the way you want it, but it’s because of a passion, or a passion for perfection. And when that’s directed in the other direction, it’s something wonderful to have these things. We’re born with certain, we come with certain qualities to yoga, and somehow we can’t change them. They’re within us, but we find the way, or Swāmījī finds the way more likely, to direct them in the right direction. I think you’ve seen sometimes when Swāmījī is organizing the kitchen, that he uses every single thing that’s in the kitchen in that sabjī. When we’re eating watermelons in Jadan, I don’t know if Swāmījī does it in Hungary also, but we’re not allowed to throw out the skin. Because, apart from the completely outer part, the green part, all of that white part is good for making sabjī. And in every one of us, there are qualities that come up somehow negatively. But I don’t see Swāmījī throwing them out. He transforms them to go into something that’s useful. Now, Yogeśjī gets a little bit more angry than I do. True. But that’s Yogeśjī’s passion, and that’s Yogeśjī’s quest for perfection. And if Swāmījī would give me that job to try and build the Omāśram, you’d just have some bricks and some tin shed, because I don’t have that passion to do that, that drive. In one way, it’s a weakness, but on the other way, it’s the thing that makes that whole building stand. And Swāmījī transforms that energy. I don’t want to use Yogeśjī as the only example. Everybody has these things. You may be extremely strong at studying or intellectually understanding so quickly, but then on the other side, that’s also your weakness because you won’t have to go deeply into understanding. If you may be a person who’s so flexible that every āsana comes easy, but as a yoga teacher, that person who was completely inflexible will have a lot of answers for those students who come that you won’t have. Every strength which we have, every plus point we have, if we just take it for granted, it can become our weakness. If it comes easy for somebody to sit and meditate, how are they going to explain it to somebody who it’s hard for? They have to do research. And in all these things, and I go back to this swimmer, such a strength those athletes have to go on that discipline. And pray to Mahāprabhujī that when they retire, the first thing they’ll do is find yoga. Anyhow, they’re going to need it, because every joint in the body is going to be destroyed. But if that energy can go somewhere else, it can be something really, really wonderful. I think there have been some disciples of Swāmījī over the years who have also been great athletes and have been very special in yoga. I never met Rāk from Ljubljana, but from what I heard, he was a very, very special person. And you see that discipline of the athlete, and also it comes in yoga, how special it is. So, I think when I see those athletes doing what they do, it’s an inspiration to try and do what they do as far as discipline is concerned, but to stay on our path and to stay on the way that Swāmījī has given as to what we do it for. And it’s our good luck that when we actually can’t put it in the right direction ourselves, Swāmījī, somehow like Kṛṣṇa, takes over the reins on the rath and starts to direct that energy, which we have, in a useful direction. I wanted to read something from Līlā Amṛt. Today is one of Devpurījī’s birthdays, because we have one according to the moon calendar, one according to the sun calendar, and then the one that’s the day before Swāmījī’s birthday. So today is the day before Swāmījī’s birthday. So I picked out a story or two from the Līlā Amṛt. Yeah, but this is not the moon date. Once, numerous devotees had gathered for satsaṅg, and their songs and prayers resounded far and wide. Suddenly, a horse appeared and approached the ashram at full gallop, but no rider could be seen on its back. Only the glint of a shining sword flashed in the sun. The disciples wondered at this when Mahāprabhujī explained, "This is a sign that my guru..." Śrī Devpurījī is coming, move out of the way quickly. At that same moment, Yogī Rāj Śrī Devpurījī entered the ashram and in an enraged voice cried, "Dīp, what is all this māyā you created here? With leaf and matchstick, I have come to remove it." The leaf and the matchstick refer to two previous stories in the book. One is where he put the leaf that would never stop being green on the ground. And the other was that he would put the matchstick up in the strong wind, and it wouldn’t blow out. So saying, he took the leaf that lay in the sand. He then ordered the disciples to pile up all musical instruments, books, blankets, and household goods of the ashram. And these he set on fire. Surprised and afraid, the disciples hid themselves from Śrī Devpurījī. Only Mahāprabhujī remained relaxed and calm. After some time, Śrī Natulal Megwal, a close disciple, dared to come out and spoke respectfully to Śrī Devpurījī: "Mahādev, why do you destroy our instruments on which we play to honor thy name? How shall we celebrate satsaṅg now?" Without anger and with great compassion and mercy, Śrī Devpurījī replied, "I did not destroy these instruments, but sent them to Devlok, to Lord Indra and his celestial companions. They also praise Śrī Viśvadīp, the light of the universe. Don’t worry, you will get everything back and much, much more." And then there’s another story, because somehow they’re a little bit similar. Once when Śrī Devpurījī was staying near Kāṭhū, Ṭhākur Īśvarasiṅghjī of Chhoṭī Kāṭhū came to visit and invited Śrī Devpurījī to his palace. He accepted the invitation. "Expect me tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock." The Ṭhākur returned to his palace to make preparations for Gurudev’s arrival. At exactly 10 o’clock the next morning, Śrī Devpurījī appeared, and the family of the Ṭhākur received him with full honors. Ṭhākur Īśvar Siṅghjī showed Śrī Devpurījī his house and took him to the library, which contained many books. After looking at them, Śrī Devpurījī ordered all to be carried to the courtyard and placed in a pile. Next, he demanded a can of petrol, which he poured over the books and then set them alight. Sitting before the fire, he meditated, just as if he were before his own dhūnī. The Ṭhākur watched this, as you can imagine, with mixed feelings. Heaven forbid if Devpurījī would visit Gajānandjī’s library and do that. It’s not yours, that’s true. On the one hand, he grieved for the loss of his most treasured books. But on the other hand, he dared not oppose the will of his Gurudev. When finally the fire had subsided, Śrī Devpurījī turned with a smile to the Ṭhākur: "Most of your books were useless. Therefore, I made a selection of only those that were truly precious." To constantly check that certain things haven’t just become formalities. To constantly check you’re not just doing your mālā without really paying attention to what a special thing it is you’re doing. Everything: mālā, āsana, prāṇāyāma, sevā. When you’re doing sevā, when you’re doing karma yoga, it’s such a special thing. It’s such a high yoga, let’s say, to be doing karma yoga and to be doing it selflessly. But at the same time, after some time, you can get stuck thinking, "Oh, I work in the office, in the ashram." There’s a very big difference between working in an office in an ashram and doing karma yoga. And the difference is only—it’s a big difference, but it’s only in our attitude towards it and in how we’re doing it. But it’s so easy to get caught in that, because things happen regularly and you’re doing them for years and years and years. I don’t know how many years you’ve been organizing Vāp seminars. And I’m sure that for those who are organizing it, it’s almost become like a routine to do it. It’s something that just flows, and that’s beautiful, that it flows, and it’s become so much easier to do than in the beginning. But at the same time, it’s still just as special a karma yoga as it was in the beginning. It’s only a matter of not forgetting what you’re doing, what a special thing you’re doing, how lucky you are to be doing it, actually. It’s not just that I work in the kitchen; I do it every year. You’re the one who’s lucky to work in the kitchen every year. You know, to get that opportunity to do sevā, to get that opportunity to do sevā for Swāmījī. Apply it to karma yoga, apply it to your practice, apply it to the prayer. It can be so easy to be singing the prayer, because we all know it so well, and be thinking about something in another country. And for me, that’s what, when Devpurījī comes and puts the petrol on those instruments, he’s saying, "Well, what have you been using them for?" As the bhaktas said, they used them for singing Mahāprabhujī’s divine name and Devpurījī’s divine name. But perhaps in reality, they’d actually forgotten that they were doing that or weren’t aware of it anymore. And in Devpurījī’s rather extreme way, he was giving them a refreshment course. A little bit later in the same story, out of nowhere, a truck comes with all of the things that they need for the ashram. And nobody knows where it came from, and nobody knows who the person is who’s bringing it. So it’s definitely not that Devpurījī wanted them to stop singing bhajans, but perhaps to really start singing. Think about it. It’s again part of what we’re here for: to refresh every part of our spiritual life, to look at ourselves and how we’re doing, what we’re doing. And we ought to have, somehow, a look from a distance at ourselves, because we may not have a lot of hours to do things, but those ones at least we should do with the quality. And the second story there about the books again from my side: when I look at myself, so easily it comes that you can be doing so many things that actually aren’t very relevant to your spirituality. Māyā has always been so powerful and so great, somehow. But the internet is a new, improved version. In one second, it can suck you inside. And everything is available, and most of it is just māyā. In this time, Ṭhākur Sāhab had a complete room, probably full of books. And from his perspective, surely they were all really good books and full of knowledge that was important to know. But from Devpurījī’s perspective, it’s useless knowledge. He took the nectar out of all of that, the main things out of it, and gave them back, those five books. It’s not about just the books or anything, but in our whole life, there are so many things we’re doing that are somehow quite useless. And it’s a good occasion to look through and see which one of them you can somehow cancel. You know, on your computer, when the hard disk gets full, then you go around and you look for the files which are useless, and you delete them. Or buy a bigger one, yeah, that’s another option. But if you’re not going to buy a bigger one, I’m sure anybody can go through their computer and find huge numbers of files and photos and things that are just completely useless and just taking up space. There’s this German word, Gajānandjī, is it Rāmsch? How do you say it? Ramsch, yes. I don’t know, Premanandjī keeps telling me it translates something like useless clutter or useless items. And in Jadan, Premanandjī and I often sit, and he’ll say, "What are you doing?" And I’ll be cleaning something like, you know, cleaning my files in the office. We call it de-rumshing. Removing the useless clutter. But it’s not a bad thing once in a while to do a de-rumshing of your personal life, look through and see those things that are completely useless that you’re doing, and which are taking up the space for those things which you feel you don’t have time to do, which are really special. Three-monthly de-rumshing is perfect. So, to put the two together somehow, it seems like Devpurījī did a de-rumshing of Ṭhākur Sāhab’s library. You know, we’re here, time is short, and there’s a certain essence that Swāmījī has given us to practice. And it’s very easy to get caught on other things that are not so important as that which Swāmījī really wants us to practice. So it’s somehow important sometimes to put that fire, like Devpurījī does, and clear the space. In Australia, we don’t call it jungle, we don’t call it forest, we call it bush. It is extremely adapted to fires. Because we have a very hot and dry country, and in our forest, if there isn’t a fire every seven years, it’s not healthy for the plants. Because we don’t have such tall trees like you have here. And there’s a lot of rubbish that gathers down. And every time that the fire comes through, as they do every seven or eight years, it clears the floor of the forest completely. And that’s the place where the new plants can grow and the new shoots can come from. Because if there’s no space, then there’s no possibility for them to grow. And in Jadan, we have this miracle of nature: it rains, and the next day it’s green. In Australia, I saw a similar miracle once. In the forest near my family’s house, there was a huge fire. It looked the day after just like the moon. There was nothing, tree trunks and ash, and you’d feel that that forest has been destroyed. You couldn’t imagine how much space there was between the trees because before, you couldn’t walk anywhere because of the small plants. But in one week, it was green. There were things coming up everywhere. It was unbelievable because they had space to grow again. It’s quite an incredible thing. There are some plants in the bush in Australia, and their seeds actually only release in a fire. They’ll have seeds, the pods, they’re very hard. They’ll be there for 7, 8, 10 years, 15 years, no problem. When it gets super hot, it explodes. Seeds go everywhere and new plants grow. But that’s not the point. What I want to say is that clearing, when we clear all of our own clutter, our own rāmsch, it leaves space again for us to grow and for the aspects of our self that we want to develop to grow again. It’s so easy to get lost. Everybody does it. But it’s so important to have Swāmījī, Devpurījī, and Mahāprabhujī to remind us of those things and that we refresh our practice.