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Relatives and those in need, this support traditionally lasts until around age fifty. Today, we might say sixty-five, the age of retirement. After the householder life, when you have raised and educated your children and they are grown, you hand over all your material possessions to them. You remain available if they need you, but you do not interfere. This is the third stage of life, the vānaprastha āśrama. It is a preparation for entering a more spiritual life in the ashram. Thus, vānaprastha āśrama is a training to learn renunciation. Renunciation is not easy; to detach from attachments is difficult. Yet if we cannot renounce, we will not be happy. We will constantly have tension and sorrow. But it is said, "Renounce and enjoy." Mahatma Gandhi said, "Renounce and enjoy." If you wish to enjoy the rest of your life, then renounce it. Our master, holy Gurujī, said it very beautifully: "Enter the kingdom of God through the gate of sacrifice." So renunciation is a sacrifice—a letting go of personal attachment to family, children, property, and so on. After this, the fourth āśrama begins around age seventy-five. This is called sannyāsa āśram. Sannyāsa is one of the highest initiations in human life. Sannyās means you have renounced everything and accept the whole world as one family: Vasudhaiva Kuṭumbakam—the entire world is the one family of the one God. You dedicate your time to meditation, prayer, preaching, and supporting and helping others. However, it is not that as a sannyāsī you need do nothing but sit and meditate. That would mean you have landed in laziness and selfishness. A sannyāsī's life is for the protection of all creatures and to help every needy person. No one can say, "This is only mine." You become universal, unattached to any single thing. The only attachment permissible is to our path, our Gurudev, and our spiritual love—which is the subject for this evening: the awakening of divine love. When they gave me this title, I asked them, "What is that divine love? They should tell me, and then I can explain better." But divine love is divine love. We will speak about it. Is there a difference? Love is love. Even if you love a small plant or a flower, it is the same love as love for God. Our grand master, Bhagavān Śrīdīp Nārāyaṇ Mahāprabhujī, said in his golden teachings: "Love each and every entity, if not more, then at least..." that much, as much as you love yourself. The door to self-realization is to develop unconditional love for all creatures, not for one individual person alone. Yes, we do pay more attention to those who are closer or who are helping more, but that does not mean you are attached only to that one person. The sun rises for all; it does not rise only for a few people. Similarly, when you become a sannyāsī and renounce everything, your divine light should shine for all humans, animals, other creatures, vegetation, and for our beautiful earth. If you do not succeed in this, your sannyās life is incomplete. Merely wearing different colored cloth or a different rope does not mean you have become that. It means your life now begins: to surrender, preach, practice, realize, and pass on your wisdom. Whatever wisdom and life experiences you have, you should give them to others. If you do not give, it will be lost. All of us sitting here have some talents. These talents you should give to someone so they may continue. It is said a king or a doctor can only help you as long as they are alive. A king or queen, if they wish, can give their kingdom to another. A doctor can help as long as it concerns the physical body. After death, there is only a picture of the doctor. You might say, "Please, doctor, can you do surgery for me today?" He will only be looking at you. Similarly, whatever you have, you should give and help. It will then be given further to others. This is divine love. To guide someone on the right path is divine love. To misguide, to create doubts and conflicts, that is sin. So if you cannot do good, at least you should not do bad. Whenever negative thoughts enter our mind, we should think: "Towards whom should I think negatively? Whom should I harm? Whom should I blame?" First, you are blaming and harming yourself. Therefore, the Bible also says: "Do not do to others what you do not like to be done to you." To nurture such love is itself love. Great ones can forgive; ignorant ones cannot. Therefore, God is great because God loves all equally. Try once to make your vision equal. That is what it means to be a sādhvī, a sant, a swāmī—to have equal vision. How you look at the world, with which eye you see, that will be your inner world as well. So what kind of world we are creating depends on our inner realization. There is nowhere to go to search for something; it is within our heart, within our self. You know, performing selfless service is harder than any kind of authority or practice. "Selfless" means there is no personal interest, only the single interest to help. So many spiritual organizations and great thinkers around the world create what is called a non-profit organization. That means not for one's own interest, but for helping all. Meanwhile, we sometimes say in our lectures: "Service to humanity is the best or greatest service." I do not agree with this. Perhaps you agree, but I do not. Because when we say humans are best and service is to humans, with this we have created great differences and discrimination toward other creatures. That is why other creatures are suffering. Therefore, it is said: "Ahiṃsā paramo dharma"—non-violence is the highest principle. Non-violence is not only toward humans, but also toward our plants, rivers, lakes, ocean life, birds, animals, and humans too. Violence is not only physical; it can be mental, emotional, social, political, and born of selfishness. So non-violence means we should not be violent toward anyone through body, mind, words, or our social position. A wise person in whose heart divine love awakens is like sunlight. Wherever there is darkness, when the sun rises, the darkness disappears. So it is very easy to remove darkness, but only through light, through divine love. You go into a cave, and inside the cave is darkness—very dark. For perhaps millions of years this cave has existed in darkness. We go inside and say, "Please, darkness, you have been here long enough. Can you go out?" The darkness will not move. There is no way to remove the darkness. But what do we do? We bring a light inside. As soon as the light is on, we do not know in which second the darkness disappears. Similarly, when in our heart we have mercy and peace, the darkness of ignorance, the darkness of hate, conflict, greed, jealousy, and so on, all will disappear. And your inner self will finally breathe nice air, like when you go for a walk in Vancouver or in the mountains—such clean, good air. Otherwise, what we call the air is very stinky; we cannot breathe. What does that mean? It refers to the circumstances, the situations. So it is easy to say, but difficult to digest. We cannot digest it; we can only dissolve it through the light of our wisdom, knowledge, or love. This kind of love awakens only through the education from our parents. Our parents are our first teachers. Then through your friends, and then through your spiritual master. Then we can pray. Then we can understand. Without having love, we cannot be successful. If you wish to be successful in something, you should fall in love with it. If you want to study, say, chemistry, then you have to fall in love with chemistry. You have to develop such interest. Then there is no problem passing your examination smoothly; it will go well. But if you do not like it and think, "I must do it, oh God," and "I will study tomorrow or the day after," then when examinations come, we are lost. Then people telephone me and say, "Swāmījī, please, can you help me? Tomorrow I have my examination." Yes, really. Of course, I pray for them. I wish them all the best, but finally we have to learn ourselves. So we have to go. Yoga in life is a very gentle system, and it has divine blessings. It is not that someone goes somewhere and practices for one or two weeks, or attends a seminar or retreat, and comes away with a yoga teacher certificate. That is the blind leading the blind. According to Yoga and Life, to become a teacher of Yoga and Life, you must study for five years. Only then can you say, "Yes, now I would like to be a yoga teacher." So first we should experience, first we should practice. And even if you do not wish to become a teacher, you should become a teacher of yourself. For that we need one thing: discipline. The great saint Patañjali, the father of psychology and the research of mind, consciousness, and emotions—the great Patañjali, who lived about 1500 years before Christ—he writes. These Patañjali Yoga Sūtra books are available here in Vancouver in every bookstore, or perhaps they have them here somewhere. The great saint Patañjali said first: "Atha Yoga Anuśāsanam." Yoga begins with discipline, and now I will explain this discipline. "Atha" means "now." So do not think, "Tomorrow I will be disciplined." Who has seen tomorrow? No one has seen tomorrow. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow. Someone writes on an office door: "Please come tomorrow." So you come tomorrow, and it is written, "Please come tomorrow." You knock. It is written: "I was here yesterday, and you said, 'Come tomorrow.'" I said, "No, what is written on the door, please?" It is by law; this is that. So tomorrow will always be tomorrow. And the past is past. Do not cry for the past. What happened has happened. When a bullet leaves the gun, it is gone. It will not return.