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Brahmānandam Paramasukhadam Kevalam Jñānamūrtyam Dvandātītam Gaganasadṛśam Tasmāsyādilakṣam Ekam Nityam Vimalāchalam Sarvādhiṣākṣibhūtam Bhāvātītam Triguṇarahitam Satgurutam Anāmamyam Om Dīp Jyoti Parabrahma Dīpam Sarve Mohanam Om Śānti, Śānti, Śānti. Deep Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān, Devī Svarmā, Satguru Svāmī Madhavānandajī Bhagavān, Satya Sanātana Dhan. Good evening to everybody. Nice to see you again. It is still winter there. I was looking forward to seeing the winter this year, and thanks to Mahāprabhujī, he kept the winter here still. Around the whole world, the climate is changing. It is not because of pollution, but it is because the earth is moving. Australia is thousands of kilometers away, but once it was connected to India; you could walk through. It means there was a land-to-land connection. And that is what the experts are saying nowadays: that what they call the Australian aborigines are originally from South India. So it is changing. Why not? The whole universe is moving. Everything is working. Our body is working. Our cells in the body are working and changing. It is nice to observe. But that observer should not change: knowledge, knower, and object. In this, that knowledge is not changing. The object, which would like to see what it is—into what? Into the knowledge. Ādi Guru Bhagavān Śaṅkarācārya and his divine teachings, the Advaitavāda, the Vedānta. Dvaita is duality, and advaita is non-duality. So what is visible, what is touchable, is changeable. Time is not counted in that reality. So the reality says that reality will remain reality. Ādi Guru Bhagavān Śaṅkarācārya—one of the German philosophers studied his literature and he said, “Such a great thinker and writer has not been on this earth till now.” And Śaṅkarācārya’s teaching was to self-realization. Ātmā Anubhūti means knowing of the Ātmā. Anubhuti means experience. When you experience something at once—only once—that will always remain. Such experiences, which we call self-realization, will always transcend worldly changes. Many things we forget, and many things will come. But that experience of the divine Ātmā, the moment we feel oneness—one with God, one with the universe—Ātmā Anubhūti, or to get this knowledge, Ātmā Cintan. Cintan means thinking over, studying. When you want to solve a problem, you are thinking about how to solve it. The person who made the telephone—now these modern telephones—I have been doing cintan about this. Whatever we can get through this telephone, information, it is the cintan of the modern man. Overthought. Went for a walk alone in the forest, on the beach, in the night, always thinking, experimenting; then I got exactly the result, and then it was given into our hands. So that was a human brain, cintan, thinking over. But in this modern world, in this Kali Yuga time, one thing is a pity, one thing is a shame: that all the ability of the human brain is directed outward into technology. Now, everyone wants to study something about techniques. They are successful. But it is limited. It made the human lonely. It made human separated from human, enemy. It made the man just like a technique only. Two things are missing: ethics and spirituality. Day by day you see that spirituality is becoming less and less. It doesn’t matter which religion you talk about. Many people feel ashamed to say that they are religious. So this is all that is developed in this modern world. It is a dry, plastic apple. You can’t eat it. Spirituality. Great saints in the past, great philosophers in the past, throughout the whole world, they tried very hard to give humans spirituality. Because humans, God has made them for another purpose, and that is self-realization. Therefore, Śaṅkarācārya jī said, “From where do I come?” This question: “Ko’ham? Katham? Midam? Jatam? Ko vik? Kartasya vidyate?” So think over: for what did God send us here, or give us such a brain? Those hidden powers in humans, those hidden abilities in us—we are wasting 100% towards technology. And so, let’s think about why God created us and sent us to the earth. 100% of our hidden abilities are momentarily thrown at technology. Of course, at a certain level, technology is good. There is nothing to say against it. It’s great. But it doesn’t solve that problem, the aim of self-realization. If in this technology, if in this modern teaching there would be spirituality and ethical education, yes, man would be today like the great ṛṣis in the past. Yes, many things, many techniques, what they developed, were spoken by the ṛṣis or given by the ṛṣis. We call it Durdarśan. Dur means distance, far away, and darśan means to see. So, those ṛṣis, those yogīs, could see us thousands of kilometers away. The example, the evidence, during the Mahābhārata battle, when in Kurukṣetra the Mahābhārata battle began, the blind king Dhṛtarāṣṭra asked, “How is my son and my children? And how are the Pāṇḍavas doing?” So, in order to give him this knowledge, his secretary got the blessing. His name was Sanjay, and Krishna gave him a blessing that Sanjay can see at a far distance, 300 kilometers away, what is happening. And informing the king, when it began, he got the vision. And in the evening, when war was, in the evening there was law; at night, no fight. And no one should kill someone by shooting from behind or by standing behind the trees, hiding. If you are a hero, if you are a warrior, if you are not a coward, then you have to go to the battlefield with an open chest, face to face. Nowadays, they hide somewhere, they shoot, and they run away. Or, from a distance, pressing buttons, navigating, and killing some people. That was not allowed: face to face, arm to arm. That’s why in the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa explains about the four castes. And this caste is not divided from person to person. The Brahmin means the knowledge, and that is our brain, our head. All the Jñāna Indriyas, the senses of knowledge, are located above the shoulders, in this part of the body. Except the skin, which goes through the whole body. It doesn’t matter if it’s small toes or fingers, any part of the body, that’s called tvacā, it means skin, and it means touch. Even a little mosquito bites us, and we know where and what happened. So the brahmin is this part of our body. And warriors are the arms, the strength. They were fighting with their arms, with an open body, not closed. That is a warrior. And the stomach, the trunk of the body, which has all the organs, which is very important for life—they are protected in this part of the body, the trunk of the body, and supplying the nourishment to the entire body: muscles, glands, joints, ligaments, everything. So that’s called the farmer, the Vaiśya. Like a farmer supplies nourishment, food. And the legs, they are always ready to carry us anywhere. It doesn’t matter if the floor is clean or not. It does not think if it is dirty or not dirty. The duty of the legs is to carry your body anywhere you wish. That’s seva, service. And so this is called śūdra, because they can touch; your foot can touch any dirt. Those we call Brāhmaṇa, Kṣatriya, Vaiśya, and Śūdra. All in one, in your body. Brāhmaṇa, Kṣatriya, Vaiśya, Śūdra, all four in one in your body. This was given in the Śāstras, in authentic old scriptures. The caste, what means the caste... There was no name of the caste. The caste name came when the British entered India and divided it in different ways, what they called touchability and untouchability, so that began in the last few centuries. So the human body, which has immense qualities and abilities, needs to be awakened. So, Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa gave the vision to Sañjaya, that during the war he could see, and he was telling everything to the king. Now, this chariot came. Who is sitting on this chariot? What dress do they have? What color of the dress do they have? Everything. And when the war changed, ended, and Duryodhana was killed, and then he said, “The war is ended,” and Duryodhana died. And Dhṛtarāṣṭra said, “And what happened?” He said, “I can’t see anything. I can’t tell you anything, king. This divine vision is gone.” So, dūr darśan, to have the vision to the far distance, that was Guru Kṛpā. So when you lost the Guru Śiva, Guru Bhakti, then you lost that vision. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how clever you are, how good you work, but that kṛpā is gone. Mokṣa mūlaṁ guru kṛpā, so that kṛpā has to be there. Dūrdarśan, and also Dūrsravan. Dūrsravan means listening. You are sitting here, and your friend is sitting in the Himalayas in a cave and meditating. And someone goes to him and begins to talk. You know, you can listen to what they are talking about. Yes, that was it. They could hear everything. So that technology became a telephone. And the seeing of far distances became television. Dūr Darśan. Vision. So that vision is to see, to be seen. So everything that is developed nowadays, nothing till today I have, at least myself, have not heard anything which is not described in the Vedas and old yogic siddhis. Okay, we developed, but there is a but. There is a difference between ātmā and the body. Ātmā is immortal. Ātmā is everywhere. Ātmā cannot be stopped anywhere, and the body is limited. So the ātmā is the unlimited abilities of the yogīs. It doesn’t need to recharge the battery. So this technology is limited; it’s dependent. But spirituality’s technology, the yogic abilities, are unchangeable. And it’s not limited, one without second. Beyond everything. And there is a cintan. It means think over for what you are born. For a little different kind of joy or happiness, all your doubts, which bring you much gossiping, and we like gossiping. When you eat good food, it’s on your table. But the test—the border of the test—is only till the throat. When you swallow down, the stomach doesn’t feel bitter, salty, or hot chili. But we don’t think of our stomach; we think of our taste, and taste is something which moves us from our main aim, so that kṛpā is gone. Therefore, Śaṅkarācārya is telling, “Cintan, Ātmā Cintan, meditation,” and meditation automatically has to come to the subject of the Ātmā Cintan. Many yoga teachers in the world are learning meditation and teaching meditation. But they learn wrong, and they teach wrong. The first thing is that they think we don’t need a guru, because we are ourselves a guru. And now you see the work of such a guru, how it is. You teach the meditation, and then you say, “Now, am I in the sun rising?” And someone doesn’t like the sun rising. Are you sure that they want to see the sunrise? So, what kind of instructions are you giving? That it’s just a sun rising or a dawn or sunset is temporary, only to move yourself in a different direction. But Ātmā Cintan, with that mantra and Guru Kṛpā, it takes a long time to come to this knowledge. A long, long time. So when you do not have proper cintan, if you have not learned proper cintan, then you have a cintan, cintan... My God, beautiful words, no? The complete opposite. And that is called Cintā. Cintā means worry. Worry about many things, and that worry is the cause of the fear, that worry is the cause of the nervousness, that worry is uncertainty, that worry brings anger, hate, and jealousy. It’s a very subtle power in it that will make a lot of cracks inside, and it dissipates your bhakti. You know, we have a big talāb in Jadan. This year, there was nearly seven meters of water inside, deep. And now it’s only three or four. We can’t find where the water is leaking. But there must be a leakage somewhere. So this is what we call cintā. Cintā makes many, many cracks. It means our belief, our trust, our certainty, our faith is all cracking. Cintā is the termite which can destroy the whole big tree. Therefore, no worry, no cintā, but cintan. Think over, and you will find that mistake within yourself. Now, there is another kind of cintan: worried about study, to get a profession, work, get married, how to find a good partner. But you know, you found a partner many times, but you did not make cintan over; you went sideways, you had a cintā, you were worried about it. Therefore, Holī Gurujī said it nicely: “cintā kabhī mat karanā.” Never be worried about it. Don’t worry, take it as it is. Yes, what happens will happen. And what will not happen, will not happen. Worrying about this will not help you. If something is wrong, then do the work with knowledge. But not Cintā, sitting at home and thinking, “What should I do? What should I do?” That’s it. So, Ātmā Anubhūti, Ātmā Cintan, Ātmā Bheda, Hāt Choḍ Mana Chala Sāṅg. In meditation, tell to thy mind. O my mind, give up your wrong ideas, come with me, I will tell you what is the ātmā. “Hāt choḍ mana chāl saṅg mere.” The mind said, “Come on with me, cintan, towards the ātmā jñāna.” So that is Ādi Guru Bhagavān Śaṅkarācārya, whose philosophy was non-dualism. There is only one. There is no two. And where there is a two, there is duality, and the duality is not reality. We are physically different, but as ātmā, we are all one. And when we will realize this, Śaṅkarācārya said, to see thyself in each and every entity—this is the first step of self-realization. There is reconciliation, there is forgiveness, there is to forget, and there is to become one. That’s it. So we will continue tomorrow, and wish you a very nice evening. So sing the bhajana of Gurujī. This is a spiritual lecture about Yoga in the Indian tradition.