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Śrīdīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavānakī Jaya, Śrī Śrīdhāveśvara Mahādeva Kī, Śrī Marav Kṛṣṇa Bhagavānakī Jaya, Viśva Guru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṃsavāmī Maheśvara Ānandapurījī Mahārāja Kī Jaya. Hari Om, everybody. Welcome to satsaṅg for a lecture in this beautiful Gurujī ashram in Vienna. Life seems to be a gamble that never ends. Life is ruled by laws from the beginning, from birth to death, and these laws we have to follow. We can follow them, and wherever we go against these laws, there will be some kind of disharmony. These laws rule the world, this planet, the laws of nature, the cosmos, the cosmic laws, and the laws of the state. They characterize a system. Wherever there is a system, there are laws within that system that rule and govern it. Let’s say you drive a car in one country. There are certain rules and regulations about what you should do, what you should not do, what you cannot do, and what you better avoid doing. These rules are valid for that specific country. If you cross the border into another country, certain rules from the first country may also apply, but perhaps there are some additional rules we should know. It would be ignorance to go to India, drive a car, and suddenly start shouting, "Oh, all the stupid people are driving on the wrong side!" This happens many times when we enter a system or live in a society. We may not be happy with the rules of a country, but it is our own ignorance to go against them because they make sense. They make a deep sense. Why rules and regulations? Why have these laws been created? They enable us to live together in a certain harmony, in togetherness with understanding and without harming each other. The same thing applies to our body. The body itself is a system governed by laws. If you study medicine, you will understand how this system works and how these laws function together. If you look into history, it has created many different systems over time: political systems, countries, societies. They change from time to time, but they fulfill certain aims for a certain period. When time changes, perhaps the system also changes. So, first of all, if you live in a certain system, if you enter a certain system, if we practice a certain system, we should observe the rules, follow the rules, and understand the laws by which it is governed. If we understand or want to understand our body, we have to understand by which rules and by which forces it is kept alive. The main force in our body, the reason we are living, is a life force, what we normally call prāṇa. Now, if we ask a scientist, "What makes the heart beat?" he will say, "Yes, there is in the heart a kind of knot called the sinus knot, and that makes the heartbeat." But what makes this knot work? How does it go further? What is the law that governs it? Science in itself is not able to answer that question. To find it out, we have to inquire within our own self. We have to look into our own self. We have to study and go deep into our own phenomenon to realize that there is a force in us, an energy, that makes us alive. That is what we call, under the philosophy of yoga, prāṇa. Prāṇa governs all our body functions. Prāṇa is not only the nervous system, but it goes far, far beyond that. It is a link between gross matter and consciousness. Prāṇa is governed by consciousness, and it manifests through the breath, the beating of the heart, through the functions of the organs, through the mind, through our senses, through our speech, and so on. When prāṇa gets disturbed, the system gets out of balance. Prāṇa can only be disturbed because prāṇa itself is pure. It is like clean water, but whatever color you put inside, you will name the water by that color. If you pollute water, you no longer call it clear and clean. The same is true with prāṇa. Prāṇa can be polluted or disturbed by so many factors, and when it gets disturbed, polluted, or blocked, then it manifests as an illness within the body. Sometimes we call it physical illness, sometimes we call it mental illness, and so on. The most vivid or common thing we can observe is a certain nervousness in our body. That is a manifestation of prāṇa when it is no longer in accordance with the laws of its natural flow. There are some laws that have not been observed within the system. When I was in India, I had a lot of work to be done in the offices, my own work or for the ashram and the institution. Many times I saw officers who are normally quite tense in their work. They sit behind the desk very calm and peaceful, but under the desk, you see them moving their legs very fast. Many times I thought, "What is that? What is happening with that person?" I discovered it is an expression of a certain kind of tension that people have, and it releases into the gross matter in physical form. Sometimes you will see people and we say, "Oh, here’s a little bit," because he has some kind of movements here and there. That is just when the nervous system gets overloaded with a certain type of tension. It expresses itself in the body and is not controllable anymore. This is the purpose or the feeling. When you are not aware, even if you are aware, you cannot control it anymore. It expresses itself in that movement, in that way. People who are aware of it can do something about it. You can do something via prāṇāyāma to open this blockage, to release it, to purify your nervous system again, to calm it down, to harmonize it so that your body comes again into harmony with the system, allowing the laws which govern the system to work in their own way. As Swāmījī says many times, wherever there is a system, one has to follow the rules of the system. One should not mix other things inside, because this system has been created for a certain purpose and is complete in itself. It is harmonizing in itself through those techniques, through those exercises, and through these laws. If you follow these laws, you will get the most benefit out of it. If you follow the system within the system, you will be happy about it because then it can truly reveal its best and its most benefit. If you have pure water and you mix color inside, then of course it gets polluted. Then the process is again that it has to be purified. Purification is always a process of hard work. We know how much is done in this world to purify water that has been polluted by humans. It costs a lot of money, a lot of investment in time. It is a huge logistic task. If we apply this to the macrocosm of ourself, it is not much different. So once we are nervous and we are not aware of it, but once it manifests itself in the body and we become aware of it, then we can do something. Then it is the highest time to do something, because this nervousness starts to slowly take over our life. It dominates our life. It is not only a question that we see or feel it, but other people also see it. The impression given to others is an indication, and people will realize it. So practicing yoga helps us to calm down our nervous system, especially prāṇāyāma, to purify it and to make our body healthy. And, of course, like branches—small branches—towards our consciousness, towards our mind, and towards our spiritual development. We have to have a very strong nervous system to proceed on our spiritual path, because truth, when it reveals, is not easy to digest. Many times we have heard about people who have spiritual experiences but are suddenly shattered by these experiences because their nervous system is shattered. So it is important to practice prāṇāyāma. It is important to deal also with the theoretical part of prāṇāyāma, but it is more important to practice prāṇāyāma within a system, step by step, so that slowly, slowly, the body can get used to it, become purified, and get ready for your spiritual journey. Thank you so much for listening. Now I am looking forward to the real satsaṅg. And thank you so much for listening. Śrīdīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān, Śrī Deep Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Dev Puruṣa Mahādev kī Jai. Satguru Swami Madhavānandjī Bhagavān kī Jai, Satya Sanātan Dharma kī Jai. Many know, and many do not know, what "Jai" means. Jai means victory, Jai means glory, Jai means success, and Jai means love. Jai means truth, and Jai means be successful. God is the truth. God is great. God is ultimate, and that God is within us. Our victory, our success depends on our own practice and prāṇa. Swāmī Premānandajī spoke very nicely about prāṇa and gave a very nice example. When water is very clean, it has no color. Water has no form. Form is there when there is a color. But the reflection of the sky makes it seem like we think it is blue water, but in reality, it is not blue. If there is a reflection of some trees and greenery, it looks green, but it is not green. The water is pure. Our life depends a lot on water. Water is life, and life is water. So, in this colorless, formless water is the Ātmā, the Self. And so it is said: through the rain, that is all on ātmā, jīvātmā descending from the astral world into this physical world, material world, mortal world. This world is karmabhūmi, our working kṣetra, the field where we can work. Dharma Bhūmi is within us, and that dharma is to be realized through jñāna. It does not matter which kind of life you lead—bachelor, married, not married—there are many, many different activities. But we should know one thing that is very important. We spoke a lot about chitta vṛtti, antaḥkaraṇa. There is one bhajan from Mahāprabhujī: "Antaḥkaraṇa may layer up." In antaḥkaraṇa—now many do not know what antaḥkaraṇa is—antaḥkaraṇa is our inner function. Manas, buddhi, citta, ahaṁkāra: these are the four antaḥkaraṇa. Manas is mind, buddhi is intellect, ahaṁkāra is ego, and citta is our thoughts, thinking. Within this, vṛtti awakes, and vṛttis are like water waves. In antarākāśa, lehar upaje, like a beautiful, peaceful lake. We throw one stone in the middle of the lake, and we see the waves are created like a disc. These are the layers, one after the other. Will it remain only a few minutes, not only one or two times, and finish? No, it is multiplying, and it reaches the beach, till the limitation. Every thought which has its roots from outside, through our vṛttis, our thoughts—either through visions, smell, sound, taste, or through touch when a sense is activated—if it is negative, that means you have thrown a stone in the beautiful, peaceful lake of your citta. That negative thought is like a stone inside and is multiplying, multiplying. That will cover our consciousness with negative energy. If one speaks beautiful, good words and good sentences, that will also create beautiful waves, and it will purify our antaḥkaraṇa, our consciousness. Secondly, whatever we see, hear, listen to, taste, touch, and whatever we do, speak, or eat—the societies remaining with talking, etc.—that gives us a kind of energy: physical energy, mental energy. That energy immediately covers your aura; it covers all five bodies: annamaya kośa, prāṇamaya kośa, manomaya kośa, vijñānamaya kośa, and ānandamaya kośa. That layer is like lamination on a picture. That layer is like when you put oil in the bathtub, you go in and come out, the oil remains on your body. Now, which kind of energy and which kind of touch with energy do you have? We have so many layers of different kinds of energy, and the Jīvātmā, the soul, is stuck inside. It does not matter what you do, it will not help you. Therefore, we shall try to purify those energies which are dwelling in our body, mind, emotion, and intellect. That makes us uncertain; that creates fear, anger, jealousy, greed, and that creates the great ego, the pride. For many, many lives you wash your mind, but that spot of those negative energies is so nearly impossible to remove. For that spot, we got a human life. And if in the human life we do not understand, then we will again lose what we got—the golden chance that God has given as a human life. It is the saṃsāra. From every direction we look, there are impressions, and this impression is printed in our antaḥkaraṇa, slaya. From whom you take eating, in whose hands the food was held, from which field the food is coming—that has a great effect on our body and our spiritual development. From where the water is brought, who brought it, what was the touch on it? So we cannot avoid so many things. I think it is enough for now. We cannot avoid many, many things, but still we should take care. Every word you speak with someone, every relation that you create with someone—you do not know how immense the thick layers of karma you have. So, how many karma will you wash away? Mantra practice is something like a torchlight to walk through the jungle in darkness. That is a light which will guide the soul. There is a beautiful bhajan from Mahāprabhujī, and that bhajan is singing: "Ghanādin bhat kire mein kanya kavarinar kei kalap mamabhityaji parpursho ke laar nahi paya bharataar, nahi paya brahmaveta bharataar." So, "kanya" means our vṛtti. Our vṛtti is that "kanya." "Kanya" means the virgin, the girl. And she said, "Many kalapas." Kalapa means how many millions of years. "I waste my life with others. I did not find that man or my husband—Brahmaveta Bhartar, who was the Brahmagyānī, who could give me the love of the Brahman, love of that wisdom?" K. Kalapamambityaji was sometimes alone, lost. Who is saying this? The inner vṛttis, the inner self. Therefore, sūtra. Sūtra means our vision; sūtra means our aim; you can say awareness. Surata, waha jaiye—oh my surata, go there where there are the holy, the saints, the pure. Diseases—do not go here and there. Surata is that inner motivation, inner longing. Now, many of you have different friends, relatives, mother, father, or animals: your dogs, your horse, your cat, your pet. So you are sitting here, and you are thinking, "In two hours, time for my dog to go out. I hope my friend will find the time to go there." Now, this is your sūrta. It is there. So, where your sūrta is dwelling in 24 hours, there you will go. And when once you are in a negative atmosphere, negative talks, negative energy, then it is like this: you dive in the water deep, but you cannot swim; until a certain level, the water will pull you up. But then you will be drowned, and it will take you down. So it is like a rock; a rock falls on you, and you lose everything. Oh, my mind, you lose everything with the words of hate, jealousy, anger, passion, desires, greed, etc. That is the rock on your Surata. Surata will not go in that direction. This is, in some way, called infection. So when you are infected by those negative energies, then it is covered. So water is pure. Water has no color. It is transparent. Similarly, our Ātmā is transparent. But over Jīvātmā and Citta Vṛttis is too thick a layer. So these are the three obstacles. They are called āvaraṇa, mala, and vikṣepa. One is a curtain, one is impurity, and one is the disturbances. When the thick curtain is there, then we cannot see even the beautiful sun shining; light does not come through because a heavy curtain is there. This curtain is negative energies. Temporarily, you may feel it is very good, but the final result will be dark. Āvaraṇa, the malas—impurities—physical, mental, social, spiritual, etc. This also includes our nourishment: what we drink and what we eat, with whom we live, and what kind of quality that person has. These are the mal. Mal means impurities. And this veil and dark curtain of ignorance create the vikṣepa. Vikṣepa means disturbances. We are confused; we do not know what to do. We do not know what the truth is. Brahma-satyaṁ jagat mithyā. The truth that you are searching for, or I am searching for, is only to realize that Brahman. The other is a prapañca. This prapañca is created by our five jñāna-indriyas, though they are known as jñāna-indriyas. But when this jñāna in the jñāna gets wrong information, then it is a prapañca. And so, changing the thoughts, changing the practices, changing your path will not give you anything. Do not mix. So, as Premananda was talking, the system Yoga in Daily Life, which is nearly—I would call it half a decade, or how many years? No, more than half a century, nearly 50 years. But you might begin yoga in 19... I began. My yoga practice began in 1953 with my father. Since that time, I am still doing it. I have researched, I have worked, I have practiced, and we put the techniques in such a way—the ancient wisdom for modern times. But many here who are sitting—I need not tell their names—they are doing something different besides. Then I am not responsible; do not worry. Your water is polluted. You are bathing in polluted water, but they said, "Can I do that technique? Can I do this technique? Can I do that little bit?" Okay, do it. "Can I work this energy with that energy?" Which energy do you want to work? Every energy will have an effect on you. Every touch will go as a vibration in you, and that vibration will influence your each and every blood cell. Spiritual development, spiritual achievement is not a little bit. How do you call drama? It is not only play; it is serious. So those who realize this, yes, then I do not need anything. There is one nice bhajan. So you know this bhajan. Then why are you running here and there? Why are you trying this and that? Do not try this and that. You found it, you have it, now you use it. If you do not use it, then you will lose it. No one is to be blamed. No one. Pure, scientific, very easy, comfortable, and very clear instructions. The purity, the divinity of our Siddha Pīṭha Paramparā, from Ālaka Purījī till Gurujī. Now, how we are, I do not know. How will my life end, and how will your life end? Afterwards, people will say, "Oh, that was good," or not. So that path is very transparent, divine. And many, many drink the nectar from that fountain of Ālagpurījī’s divine knowledge and wisdom. So prāṇa, prāṇa is like, you know, there is one animal, they call the... what do they call? A legon or what? Camel? What do they call in English? Okay, it does not matter; everybody knows. You can say chameleon. And this chameleon shows the weather information. That is the best correction. So, in different changes of the air, he changes color. His skin gives the information of what kind of prāṇa comes out, or when he or she is angry or scared, then sweating and getting other color. So similarly, prāṇa is pure like water, but whichever color you put in, then it will be like that. So to keep prāṇa pure is not easy. When you are every week newly married, and then every third week you are—how do you call this?—divorced, and in the next month you are again married, then your prāṇa is something like when Americans were drilling for petrol in the Mexican Sea, and there was a leakage. You see how much ocean, how many hundreds or thousands of hectares were polluted, and many animals died. So when you change like this, your inner self is dead, stuck inside. You have no prāṇa, you have no access, okay. We will see what will happen in the next life. Next life, God said, "I will give you such a life so you can continue, no problem." Yeah, this is this. So you do not think of your inner energy, you do not think of anything; you have only one feeling, and you are the slave of that feeling. If you cannot master or you cannot speak to yourself, then you are completely polluted. Completely. There is a filter before going to cosmic light. And that one filter is rejecting. This is not, not... not. I was in one factory, Ramdevjī—one of the also very famous yoga masters. He has a big, big factory with Ayurvedic medicine, and his medicines are of very pure quality. If he said organic, it is organic. And he showed me the factory where they are making these different tablets. And if one tablet is a little damaged, even very little—one millimeter—the machine rejects it and it goes again to the powder to be remade. So I do not know when—I hope Mahāprabhujī’s filter machine will be broken so we can come through.