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Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī. Śrī Śrī Dev Purīṣa Mahādeva Kī. Dharm Samrāṭ Satguru Svāmī Madhavānājī Bhagavān Kī. Satya Sanātana Dharma Kī Jai. Good evening to everyone here and to those joining via webcast. It is nice to see you. Our sādhanā group has been here at our Strelka ashram for nearly a month now. Many bhaktas and seekers came for this sādhanā, and you were all blessed. You always had the presence of many of our sannyāsīs. Among them, I believe the senior is our sādhvī sannyāsī Hṛdayakamal, then Pārvatī Gājanānjī, and many others were here: Svāmī Yogeś Purī—who has a birthday today—Svāmī Vivek Purī, and our junior sannyāsīs Umapurī, Madhuram, and Anubhavī. It was beautiful to have them all, and it was great that you were here too. Our aim is one: how to develop spiritually. We definitely wish to attain ātmā-jñāna, the experience of the Self. In these waves of māyā, in this Kali Yuga, it is not easy. It is not easy for people to follow the spiritual path. Sometimes their wings are broken; that bird cannot fly. As I often say, a couple has one body, one soul, and two wings. Their body is the wings, and the ātmā is one. Both wings should be in balance, supporting each other. If one wing is cut off, that bird cannot fly, even if we try to operate and attach another wing. This is the difference between an airplane and a living being. Just as both hands clean each other, partners should be supportive, full of respect, tolerance, and share the same spiritual path. Nowadays, almost every religion has fewer and fewer religious leaders, priests, monks, or sannyāsīs. In this darkness of the Kali Yuga, vairāgya (dispassion), bhakti (devotion), and tyāga (renunciation) are very hard to attain. These are the four pillars for taking sannyāsa, maintaining the sannyāsa life, and achieving ātma-jñāna: bhakti, tyāga, tapasyā, vairāgya, and jñāna. Tapasyā is a well-known word; it leads a person to purity. Just as we put gold or any metal into fire to purify it, tapasyā is like that fire. Tapasyā means not only sitting near a physical fire but enduring situations, overcoming the yama and niyama, and following śama and dama—the principles of jñāna yoga you know well. It means observing our inner functions and outer influences. This is called śama and dama. Śama, like svayam, means self-discipline. This discipline concerns all our indriyas, which are normally connected to the outer world. What we see through our eyes is a window for the jīvātmā. Our two eyes are two windows; the jīvātmā looks through them, always searching for some pleasure or happiness. These are the jñānendriyas. It is said, "Yathā dṛṣṭi, tathā ṛṣṭi." The kind of look you have, the feelings with which you observe visions or objects, awakens corresponding feelings within you. That creates that kind of world for you, as in the relationship between draṣṭṛ (the seer) and dṛśya (the seen). Therefore, the vision, the look, must be properly controlled. That is tapasyā. When you walk down a street past a shop window, a nice vegetable shop, and you see beautiful fruit—the first cherries (ours are still green, but imported ones may be in the market), or nice, ripe, sweet svechkin plums—your vision awakens the desire to buy and eat them. Your eyes look and awaken desires, sending sense information to the taste. The tongue, indeed the entire cave of the mouth, tastes. Desire awakens from what you are thinking. Whether you obtain the object or not is different, but not letting external objects enter you is called saṃyama (control). And dharma means surprise, but here surprise means control. Do not let your heart run wild. This sādhanā and dharma are the strong practice of tapasyā: to reject and to endure rejection. It is like a fire. Without tapasyā, we cannot achieve anything. If you are a sportsperson, you know how many hours you practice daily. That is saṃyama and niyama, that is tapasyā. Sometimes we see beautiful young gymnasts, very young kids, jumping on a wooden log only about 30 cm wide. They jump onto it and perform incredible moves. Do you think we could jump like that once? Of course—we would jump twice: the first and the last time. Abhyāsa, abhyāsa. Practice, practice. That is tapasyā. They spend hours and hours. This is tapasyā. Sitting and doing your mantra without motion is tapasyā. How you perform your kriyānuṣṭhān is still not 100% because we cannot endure the pain in our knees or ankle joints. If we had trained all year to sit motionless, this tapasyā would be successful. Many people in the morning anuṣṭhān sleep like this and ask their neighbor, "Are you sleeping too?" It is like one bull hitting another. Chetan, if you drift into drowsiness, you are sleeping. Then your mālā stops repeating the mantra; the flower hangs. It is not easy to maintain 100% attention. Those children doing sports must be one hundred percent alert, and they try so hard. They make one little mistake in movement, and the trainers, the observers, note it. When these little girls jump, one foot might be slightly out. It has to be perfect. It does not matter if one foot goes this way or that for us, but it is not okay for them. Three years of hard training for an Olympic medal, and if you jump and are slightly off—even if you are still standing—you are out. If the rules are so strict to win a sports medal, what about winning the medal of Brahmajñāna? It is stricter. Tapasyā is fire. Sādhanā is fire. Someone burns only once in a fire, but you are burning, sitting 24 hours in the fire. Then, next year, you will know what that is. So, how many rules are you following, my dear? These chairs are too high; you cannot jump to get them. In this sādhanā camp we had, many came and tried very hard, but practice was missing. Practice makes perfect. Practice makes a master. Even if you practice, sometimes karmic waves come, and you fail. We cannot do tapasyā without vairāgya, which means to stand above everything. We hardly have vairāgya. Hardly. All who are sitting here, hundreds of people, I can tell you have vairāgya at 0.5 points—and that only occasionally, when the chance arises. Vairāgya is one side; we do not see it; we walk through. As you get older, you gain a little vairāgya, but that is conditional, not real vairāgya. Real vairāgya, my God—even if God comes, you do not want to accept anything. Tapasyā, vairāgya, and tyāga: renouncing. What can we renounce? We can renounce an old dress or something we do not like because a new fashion has come. What can truly be renounced? Is there someone who will take a saṅkalpa now? For one year, I will not eat any chocolate at all—not even a trace. When you give chocolate to your child, some inevitably sticks to your finger. That was a test from a higher level, and you are finished. Whether you eat one kilo or just one milligram, you have taken it. This is not very hard; you do not eat chocolate every day anyway. Children get so much chocolate, but they also do not get it daily because parents are strict. Make a saṅkalpa, and you will see how hard it is. When you make a resolution, things will attack you. People give me so many chocolates. I do not eat chocolate, but sometimes, because it is only a small one, I eat it. Do you know why? Not because I like it, but because before giving it to the children, I must taste it. That is an excuse. But even with an excuse, you broke the niyama, the anuśāsana. Tapasyā and vairāgya, and tyāga—which is more than vairāgya. Tyāga means to give up completely. Once you say "finished," it is no more. Tapasyā, vairāgya, and tyāga can all be made easier if we have bhakti: love, love for yourself. If you cannot love anyone, do not worry; no one is longing for your love. But you do not love yourself because you have so much love, and to see this love, you need an object. As soon as you see the object, you fall from the subject of vairāgya and tyāga. Our tendency is to give. It is not that nobody loves you, but you cannot find whom to love. There is only one who will never disappoint us: God. So, there is one who loves you: Mahāprabhujī, Gurudev. It is said God loves children a hundred times more than parents do. And one hundred percent more than God, Gurudev loves you. To take care of the soul is to lead it to the divine. Tyāga, vairāgya, and tapasyā—these three are very important for us. Between them, bhakti can provide balance. If bhakti is lost, everything is lost. When bhakti is lost, it means your soul has left the body; you have died. For these three—vairāgya, tyāga, and tapasyā—we need to maintain them. First, confidence, faith. When that faith diminishes, doubt arises. Doubt is the enemy of faith. When doubt and faith are entangled, ignorance and suffering follow. This is what we must guard against. Mahāvigurājī said in a bhajan: "Viśvāsa merā kam na hove, din din adhik baḍhījo. O Mahāprabhujī, my faith should never decrease. Every day it should grow and grow." These are all bhajans of Gurujī, Mahāprabhujī, and other saints. They did not write for others; they experienced situations and sang for themselves. When they write and sing, they realize again. Is this what we call recycling feedback, or regenerating energy? It comes again to sound, nāda, the inner feeling, the call of the soul. When it moves from the maṇipūra to the heart and viśuddhi, it enters our hearing centers. This nāda is anahat nāda, endless sound. "Hat" means border; "anahat" means without borders. God, Brahman, is without border, and we are limited. Why? We are simit (limited), and Brahman is simarahit (limitless). Simit means we have a particular border of capacity; simarahit means there is no border. You have all experienced this. Those sitting here mostly know that crossing from the Czech Republic to Slovakia was once free; it was one country. Now there is a border; they can check your passport. You know how the border was between Austria and Czechoslovakia: to get a visa, you had to ask your employer, then the bank, the police, the ministry. Then you got a visa, but at the Bratislava border they might say, "No, you cannot go back." You know this well. Now you have a highway; you just go. That is it. We were limited, but now we are limit-free because we created the European Union. Similarly, this jīva, this jīvātmā, is limited in this body. You are afraid to go out of the body, so we remain only in the circle. The limited must become the limitless. For that hard work, vairāgya, tyāga, tapasyā, śraddhā (devotion, faith), and viśvāsa (confidence, no doubt) are needed. Then bhakti and jñāna will both support us. My dear, we are not born only for what we are doing now. Our inner mission and the mission of our life are somewhat different. This chance, once gone, is gone. When a bullet leaves the gun, it will not return. When the soul leaves this body, it will not return to this body. When a word leaves your mouth, it will not come back in. We must learn from this. We must listen inwardly and outwardly. Your own feelings, then you write a poem, a bhajan, and you experience that. Then you express it, and perhaps others will also utilize it. We have many difficulties, problems, and obligations. We are lost in this jungle. We have no peace because peace is lost in the shadow of fear. We must come into the light of Brahman. You are all lucky ones. You had your beautiful seminar, and persons like Gajānand, Pārvatī, Hemvatī, Hṛdayakamal, and Umapatī were all here. How nice! Twenty-four hours are left. Do your best. There is still time to attain Self-realization. And what is Self-realization? A realized person enters the hall; I will also offer praṇām to that Self-realization. It still goes like that. But I give you 24 hours. When you are Self-realized, come and bless us all. So, my dear, do not get lost in this saṁsāra. Śraddhā, tyāga, tapasyā, śraddhā, viśvāsa—these are important. We can protect śraddhā through satsaṅg. Do not try this and that and the other. The farther you go, the greater the distance grows. That means śraddhā is gone, viśvāsa is gone. Both wings are lost: śraddhā and viśvāsa. So, practice your mantra, your kriyās, your sādhanās. Tomorrow we will speak again. I wish you all the best and blessings from our Gurudev Mahāprabhujī, Holī Gurujī, Dev Purījī, and blessings from this Holī Seat, Alak Purījī Siddha Pīṭha Paramparā. Oṁ Nākāra Saha Saha Sadeveśvara Mahādeva Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī. Satguru Svāmī Madhavān Jī Bhagavān Kī Satya Sanātana.