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Sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ, sarve santu nirāmayāḥ, sarve bhadrāṇi paśyantu, mā kaścid duḥkha bhāgbhavet. Oṃ śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ. Salutation to the cosmic light, Lord of our hearts, omniscient and omnipresent. Dear sisters and brothers, good evening. It is nice to see you again and to be in Vancouver. The subject, as always, is yoga. Yoga is the science of body, mind, soul, and consciousness. Every creature is searching for happiness; it does not matter who that is. There are 8.4 million different creatures, which we divide into Jalchar, Thalchar, and Nabhachar. Jalchar means all creatures that live in the water. Thalchar, all who live on or in the earth. And Nābhachār, in the space. All together, when we count the different creatures, they become 8.4 million: Chaurāsī lākh jīva yoni. Among these, one is a human. God gave the human one most powerful tool, and that is called the intellect. Every creature has a different kind of tendency. Perhaps we should not call it intellect for them, but they have feelings: when they are hungry, they eat; when they have enough, they stop. They feel cold or hot, hunger or thirst, pleasure and pain. This God has given to every creature. Every entity is searching for the way to happiness. Now, how do we define happiness? If you look at worldly life, there are different kinds of happiness: properties, business, partners, and many other things. But that does not make us truly happy. All worldly happiness is only temporary. The sun rises and sets, and when the sun sets, it will rise again. So there is happiness and unhappiness. Is there any permanent happiness where we can be really, very happy? That is only knowledge—the knowledge which is happiness itself. That knowledge has oneness with all creatures, as well as with the whole universe. Everything else is temporary. So God gave humans the most powerful tool: the intellect. God gave us the ability to make our own decisions. For other creatures, God made a destiny, so they follow their kind of feelings. Destiny means karma, the fruits or results of our actions. But for humans, we are given the freedom to decide what we want and what we want to do. We can go ahead and do it. But we should know that whichever kind of seed we put in the ground, that kind of fruit will come. If we put the seed of a thorn bush, it will develop into a thorn bush. If we put cherry seeds, we will get cherries, apples, and so on. In the Bhagavad Gītā, third chapter, Kṛṣṇa is speaking to Arjuna. Arjuna speaks to Kṛṣṇa; there is a dialogue between them. That chapter is called Karma Yoga. Whatever you do, you will get back. Good will turn into good, and bad will turn into bad. Yoga karmasu kauśalam: your yoga practice will be successful through action. Your yogasādhanā, your achievement, what you want to do, comes through your actions. Nearly half of life is gone while studying and studying. Why? From childhood nowadays, there is school that begins early—kindergarten or nursery school. Parents take children from two years old already into kindergarten until they are six. I do not know what it is called when children go to school at six. So for four years they are practicing and learning. After that, they come to first class in primary school for five years. Then comes middle school, then high school, then college, then university—torturing and torturing. How many hours are you sitting on a hard chair? Not like this comfortable one in university, no? Why? Because we would like to learn something and make our life happy, healthy, comfortable, and free, and to fulfill human life’s purpose. So until then, our life is nearly half gone. After university education, you might study medicine, then a particular specialty, and then another subject. You come to be a surgeon, and performing an operation—a brain operation is not easy, my dear. It is very easy to say, "Oh, we will have a brain operation." But thanks to God that nowadays we have such education and science that we can do unbelievable things. Some have said a doctor is next to God. The doctor can still hold our life for a while; otherwise, from appendicitis, we would have died. So knowledge is crucial, but how many years does a doctor have to study? Then our knowledge has arrived. Similarly, it is said this will also have an end. So what to do? We have to get that kind of knowledge which will go with us. Now, when a doctor or a surgeon or a scientist dies—whether he was good or not good, it does not matter; who are we to judge the person?—we still think that person had so many talents. But as soon as the life force goes out of the body, all the machinery is finished; it does not function at all. Like here, electricity: suddenly if the powerhouse switches off, it is dark again. Where has that light gone? There is one very nice poem with deep meanings. I know exactly what it is. When milk is spoiled, it becomes sour. When milk is spoiled, where is the butter gone? We cannot gain any more butter. It was just one minute before good, fresh milk, and we could churn butter from it. But someone put a drop of lemon inside, and the milk spoiled. What happened? You cannot get any more butter out of it. A beautiful flame is burning in front of us, and if we just blow air on it, where has it gone? It is a reality. We see the flame, we know the color of the flame; we have a nice fire flame. But when the wind blows it out—windows are closed, doors are closed—where is the flame gone? It is not like a butterfly that will fly into the room. Doodh phaṭā, gṛt kahā gayā, dīpak bujh gayā, lo kahā chalī gayā. Man phaṭā kahā gayā, prīt. And second, when your mind, your man, between husband and wife, some conflict comes, then love is gone. So now your mind is not anymore in that subject. Where did that love go? Where before there was love, and where has it disappeared? So that reality knowledge which we have disappears when we die. But we need that knowledge which should remain even after death. We are sure that we come again as a human. In the Karma Yoga chapter, Kṛṣṇa said, "Arjuna, practice, practice yoga. You will get realization; you will get ātmajñāna." So Arjuna asks, "Suppose I practice for so many years, still I did not achieve my goal and I die. What will happen with my practice?" Kṛṣṇa said, "Yes, the practice which you did—because yoga is not a worldly science—it will lead you again to human life. Your soul will be born into a good family, with a good mother and a good father. Loving parents will always be together. From childhood, you will have an interest in spirituality or yoga. And as soon as you begin your sādhanā, your prayer, your meditation, etc., immediately you will unite with your past life’s karma, and you will from childhood become a very spiritual person." So what we said: oh, he is a very small child, but he has a certain tendency toward spirituality because that is from the past life. So humans have two kinds of tendencies or knowledge. One is worldly knowledge, but a doctor will not be born as a doctor, whereas a yogī or a saint will be born as a saint. This is the difference between spirituality and our other kind of knowledge, what we learn from kindergarten until university. Second, there is one very important thing: ethical and spiritual education. Nowadays, unfortunately, in schools and colleges in many countries, the ethic and spirituality subject is removed. Now there is a very big problem with the young generation because they do not have a social education. People sometimes say, "Why should I say thank you?" So when you say "Thank you" to someone, they will say "Thank you." I have been living now for 40, 45 years in Vienna and Europe. When we go shopping, we come inside and they greet you. They might say, "Grüß Gott," which means "I greet in you God." Okay, it is good. Others will say, "Hello, hello," and when you go, you also say, "Thank you," and that is it. "Thank you, please." When I went to Michigan to buy shoes, I went into the shop and I said, "Hello," and then I said, "Thank you very much." I felt very unpleasant. May I have made some mistake? This is a different mentality; it was not previously like this. Now we do not have really a proper social education. And social education can only be given in the lap of the father and the mother. That is very important. Therefore, it is not right if you put children, when they are very small, in nursery school and you feel free. It is a headache for the children. Afterward, later on, we will bring them home. And of course, they are our children; we love them very much. But half the day you go, you love money, not your child. The husband is working; okay, the mother should take care of the child, enough. Or the husband should take care of the children while the wife is working. But no, we want double money, we want double salary. This money is not everything. Our money is our children. Our happiness is our children. Our happiness is the citizens of our country. And our happiness is our whole world, which can see Vasudeva Kuṭumbakam: the whole world is one family, one God, one family. This education is slowly, slowly disappearing. The question was about peace. Every religion speaks about peace. But why now the wars? Why now are there so many weapons being produced? Why? Do you think we will bring peace with weapons, with pistols? Okay, if somebody comes and says, "I will be silent," the gun is here. Yes, okay, we will be silent, but inside we are not silent. We are very afraid, fearful of everything. Life is divine to everybody. Everybody loves their life. Therefore, Mahātmā Gandhījī said, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." That is it. So peace begins from our own heart. Human consciousness, human awareness, human emotions—we have to awaken in our awareness that I am a human. Then we can bring peace. So yoga begins with physical exercises. A healthy mind and a healthy body will make a human peaceful. Either our body is not healthy, or our mental condition is not healthy, or both are out of order. Balance is key. Just because you think you have good, strong muscles and say, "Okay, very good, I can eat as I like," that is not health. Health involves all five senses of our body, and there are ten senses: five senses of knowledge and five senses of action. The five senses of knowledge—from birth till today, whatever you have learned and are learning—is only through these five senses. Like a computer, we have keyboards, and that is all. How many keyboards? That is all. But you can do everything with these keyboards in the computer. Similarly, we have only five senses as the keyboards for our knowledge: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. Blind people know what it means to have eyes. We have little value because we do not care. Thanks to God, and we pray to the Almighty that our eyes should be functional until the last minutes of our life, so we can see this beautiful world created by God. Everything we learn through vision is only through the eyes: color, trees, rivers, mountains, a person’s face, etc. If you have never seen something, you cannot tell what it is. The second is sound, hearing. With eyes you never saw, and with hearing you never heard. Now I ask you: I have one fruit in my hand. I say, "I have this fruit in my hand, and I will tell you its name in another language. Can you tell me what this is, please?" It is a fruit, but if I ask, "Do you know what kind of fruit it is?" you might say, "No." Because you never heard the name of this, but you saw it is like a fruit. So, ām means mango. Now everybody knows what a mango is. Sound—if we cannot hear, then our other sense, the words: if we cannot hear, we cannot speak. How are we connected? Those who cannot hear at all cannot pronounce words. Though it is said the seat of sound is in the navel—the subject of Kuṇḍalinī Yoga will come there. The seat of sound is in the navel, and if a child cannot speak, we cannot keep saying, "Little bit, at least," to bring out words through the navel. There are yoga exercises in our yoga book, Yoga and Life; a few exercises are very helpful. Our eyes, then our hearing, and then taste. If we have taken honey in our mouth, we say it is sweet. Or if we put lemon, it is sour; if we put salt, it is salty. So it is our tongue and our gums that tell us it is sweet or sour or sharp, hot like chilies. If you have no kind of taste in your mouth, you cannot say what it is. So all that we hear—language, sound—when your mother telephones and you answer, you say hello, and mother says hello. You say, "Oh yes, mother, hello." "Hello, my child, how are you?" Even from a far distance, it is sound. Our ear is connected to our brain centers of the jñāna indriya, the senses of knowledge. Then, smell. What is a smell? If someone brought a beautiful rose, the whole room would have the smell of the rose. Though you have closed your eyes, you say, "Oh, the rose." But where is the rose? Yes, there is the smell of the rose. And if you never smelled such a flower, you cannot say what kind of flower it is, but it is a very nice smell. So: nose, eyes, ears, and taste. Now, the fifth sense of knowledge: touch, the skin. That is called tvacā in your yoga book. This is our skin. Even if a small ant is biting or walking on your small toe, you will say, "Oh," and the whole body knows. So these are the five senses of knowledge. These five senses are for us to be alert, to be aware. So be conscious, be aware, be in awareness, and then the intellect. The intellect is a bundle of these five senses. Through all research work, whatever you do—even rockets, airplanes, computers—all that we do, or one can do, is only through one of these knowledges, the sense of knowledge. Therefore, yoga says, "Keep your body healthy." The first point is that our five indriyas, our five jñāna senses, should be healthy. We know how to live healthy. Someone might say, "It does not matter. I have good eyes, everything. God gave me, I do what I want." Okay, God is very nice, and He will give us, but the first thing is to protect your eyes, protect your ears, etc. These five senses are very close to the brain, except the skin. The skin is connected with the nervous system. In our body, we have 72,000 nerves. In our body, around the whole body, under the skin, there are 72,000 nerves. This is according to yogic anatomy. Medical doctors, allopathic, I do not know if they count it or not. To be honest, I also did not count. So I can only say what our Śāstras said. There we have to believe. Now, these senses of sensation in the body—the skin is touching our nerves, and through this, vibration goes through the nerves. Nerves send a message to every gland and to the brain centers. These senses of our nerves in the body send a message to particular glands, which will immediately create hormones. That hormone immediately goes and affects different organs or parts of the body: heart, liver, kidneys, glands, etc., as well as in tense times. When we say, "Okay, should we have lunch or dinner now?" already preparation is going on in the stomach. It is producing hormones, and insulin is already coming into the stomach. That is why in Āyurveda, the science of Āyurvedic medicine—one of the oldest and first medical systems—it is said when you eat, eat sweet first. First eat sweet, and there are five or six different kinds of taste for your meal. One meal you should have because there are that kind of hormones developing in intense times. First is insulin, which is prepared by the body from the pancreas. Why? Because if we eat something sweet first, then it will be nicely digested. Then the rest of what you eat—your bread, butter, potatoes, tomatoes, whatever—that will be digested, but it does not need as much insulin. Sweet needs more insulin to digest, and that is why all the time people have a little diabetes. And now what do we eat? After eating, we eat some sweet, and after the sweet, we drink coffee. And after the coffee, we take ice cream. And the stomach says, "My God, this brain has gone out of order." So yoga is not only exercises; it is a way of life. That is why we call it yoga in daily life. If you are talking to someone, it is also yoga. If you are walking with someone, it is also yoga. Everything that happens through our body—be careful—everything will have an effect on our body, good or bad, positive or negative. These five senses are very close to the upper part of our neck. Therefore, it is said: head standing. In yoga, we have head standing. Of course, God gave us two legs to stand, not the head. It is not logical. But head standing is only for one or two minutes; that is enough. Repeat three, four times. So we supply more blood towards the brain and towards these five senses. The eyes will be very good, our hearing will be very good, our sense of smell will be very good, our taste will be very good, as well as our skin, because the senses of the skin begin from the Bindu Chakra here. And sound develops from the Nābhi. So these are the jñāna indriyas. Whatever we have learned, whatever we will learn still, whatever we want to know—one of our sense subjects is that. As humans, we can do unbelievable things, but everything is here through these five senses. And we knock on wood that all this remains healthy. It is said: health is not everything, but everything is nothing without health. So again, we have to come here. Yoga is one of the best ways to be healthy, if you can practice. But if we are lazy, we have no discipline. "Yeah, I practice yoga, but sometimes for two months I did not practice, and then again I will do." That is not practice. If one day you have no time to practice, then on that day you have no time to eat. That is all. You have time for eating, but not for the second or other diet—that is yoga. Okay, then do not eat, please. Tomorrow morning again, so your stomach will say, "No, first practice yoga and then eat." So we should not compromise in a different way: "I will not do this, and I will do this." This is your life. In this, no one else’s life—it is your life. We cannot buy a new body, nor can we borrow this body from somebody. "Okay, you died. Please, I give you my body, and we live for a few years. I can give your body back." It does not work. We cannot. It is our life. It is our actions, good or bad, happy or unhappy, peace or unhappiness; all is belonging and depending on our self. Then come the karma indriyas, the senses of action. There are senses of action: two hands. Through the hands we can do many actions. One story: a man was lazy, doing nothing. A snake came and said, "What are you doing here?" He said, "Oh, I cannot do anything." The snake said, "Look, I have no legs, I have no hands, I have no ears. God gave me only these eyes and mouth, other bones, and so I am reptilian. But God gave you everything: legs, hands, ears, everything. And you say you are poor and you cannot do anything? Do it. You are lazy, so do something." So our hands are for good things. I used to say: helping hands have more value than folded hands. So help everybody, help as much as you can. Help; do not say, "I am sorry, I have no time, I go." Folded hands do not have that value. If you can help anyone, even other animals, other creatures—but you should know how to help. That is it. Two hands, two legs—if you have no legs, we are sitting there, we cannot do. And our genital and urinary organs. These are two senses. And which is the fifth one? Tail? No, these are two: hands and legs. So now, what is the difference between these? They should coordinate, and sometimes they cannot coordinate. One story: a man was sitting in the forest. A hunter was running behind a deer to hunt it. A yogī was sitting there, and the deer ran by. After a few minutes, the hunter came and asked, "Do you know in which direction the deer ran?" That man saw the yogī saw that the other man had a gun. So it means he wants to kill; he will hunt that deer. Now, you see what that karma is—how to save the karma. He said inwardly, "If I tell him, 'Yes, the deer ran in this direction,' then I will be guilty. I will have the karma because he will kill. I will be responsible also for the karma." Now, if I do not tell him, and I tell him, "No, I did not see," then I am lying. So it is also said: do not lie. So now this is such a situation: if I tell, yes, I have bad karmas; if I say no, still I have bad karmas. What to do? How to come out of this situation? This yogī said, "Yes, what did you say, please?" He said, "Yes, did you see this deer?" He said, "What can I say? You say, 'Did you see this and that? A deer went in which direction?' That is my problem. I am in a dilemma." He said, "What? Just tell me." He said, "This is a problem. If I say, 'Yes, he went that direction,' then I have spoken with my mouth, and my mouth lies because the mouth cannot see. The mouth cannot see, and if my eyes tell, then eyes can see but cannot speak. So what should I do? If I speak, the speech does not see, and if I see with my eyes, then they cannot speak. So what can I tell you, my dear?" That hunter said, "He must be a crazy man," and went away. So how to coordinate our jñānendriyas, the senses of knowledge, and the senses of action? Both have to be balanced and taken care of. Then we have to create peace within us, ourselves, and outside. It is not so easy. Even when you think you are doing something positive... Another story: a man was walking with his master. The master was telling the disciple, "Help everyone, help the needy ones, be supportive." Do good things. It was raining before; now the grass was wet. They were walking on the road, master and disciple, with the disciple behind by one meter. One should not walk in front of the master; you never know, the master has a bamboo in his hand—that is another story. On the path, on the road, there was a snail slowly walking somewhere. The master was going, and the disciple remained there. The master had said, "Help, help." This small creature will take time to cross the road; if a car comes, it will kill it. So he took it slowly, carefully, went into the meadow, and put it somewhere there, then came back. The master was talking, "Do like this, and do not do this and this." There was no one saying, "Yes, sir." He looked, "Hello, where are you?" He said, "Oh, what are you doing?" "I do nothing other than what you said, Master. You said, and I do only what you told." The master said, "Okay, what did you do?" "I helped this little creature because some car will come, or someone will step on it, and it will die. So I put him on the other side." The master was angry. "Why have you done this? You did wrong." "I did not, Master. I was only doing what you said. It helped." He said, "Yes, but we did wrong. Do you know which direction he wanted to go? His family was this side, and you threw him the other side. So now it is a double way to go again." So to know is very important. So to know about our health, to know about our mind, what it is thinking, our desires—then we will have more peace. Otherwise, you feel guilty, and when you feel guilty, you cannot sleep. And when you cannot sleep at night, you think more and more complications. Therefore, if you cannot sleep, okay, you cannot sleep; that is all. Get up, wash yourself, and do some good work. You will be tired again; then go and sleep. So do not daydream in the night under the blanket; that is not healthy. Some people take tablets to sleep. It is also a kind of drug, and you will become dependent on it. It is not healthy for you, neither physically, intellectually, nor emotionally. Get up and do some other work so nonsense thoughts will go away. This is therapy for those who cannot sleep at night. Okay, do not sleep. Tell yourself, "Okay, body, do not sleep," and get up. Let us go. "I am a little bit tired, yes." Then wash yourself, go under cold water. Cold water is good in hot summer. And when it is cold wind, then warm. Make yourself fresh, take an apple or some fruit, and go for a walk. But do not go in the dark street, okay? Otherwise, you will say, "Swamijī was guilty." So your karma comes to me. But it means: do not roll in your bed here and there, left and right, again close your eyes, and think of someone. "My boss was not good to me, horrible. I have to go tomorrow. I hope he will come late." These unnecessary thoughts make us psychically disabled or imbalanced. So yoga practice, yoga in daily life, means not only physical exercises, not only closing your eyes, but taking everything in a practical way. These ten senses—five senses of knowledge and five senses of action—these are the ten horses pulling the coach of our body. These ten horses should be under our control; otherwise, they can destroy the coach. And that is why we feel damaged. Tomorrow we will see what chakras can do, what nerve systems can do, where which kind of energy is tormented, and which negative energy is running behind you. Where there is light, there is darkness after. And where there is darkness, there is light. So whenever there is darkness, we cannot remove it, but as soon as we put on the light, we do not know where the darkness has gone. Or as soon as we put off the light, again darkness is there. So we have to be in between, and there it will come to the normal level of our consciousness in normal life. These are three states: awake, sleep, and dream. How do you transfer your consciousness from awake to sleep, and how do you go from sleep to dream? Do you know when? Tonight, okay? Tonight, watch your dreams. Exactly which second did you go? Yes. So now you will be thinking, "Should I go with my astral body, or should I stay with my physical body?" Then you have one problem more. But how do you go? How do you know that you are dreaming and you are going to, let us say, Vienna? Vancouver and Vienna both have the same horoscope, you know. So you are in Vienna—oh, beautiful yoga center there, no? And suddenly the bell rings. Oh, you are in Vancouver. How quickly you came. How did your astral body go? Yoga and Kuṇḍalinī science has answered everything. So there are so many things. All arrangement is done automatically by Mother Nature or God. Like a mother bee flies to some tree or branch, and hundreds of thousands of bees will follow the queen, the mother queen, there. Similarly, where our soul goes, God sends all arrangements automatically. And within nine months, in the body of the mother, we do not know how many engineers are working inside. Everything is perfect. There was someone who was an electrician—this means the nerves. Someone for the joints, someone for bones, someone for this, everything. In nine months, what a miracle of the mother. No one else can do it. There is no scientist who can, till today, with some kind of chemicals, put it on the hand and say, "Oh, the baby is grown." It cannot; it is in the mother’s womb. On the tree, the tree mother is also the tree mother. So that is why the mother’s energy, the mother’s power, is immense. And the father is always following, observing, taking care. Everything is there. So both inside our body: our body, our emotion, our mind, our intellect, our awareness, our consciousness. Awake, sleep, dream, and higher consciousness. Then we come to different levels. The book Yoga and Life explains the hidden powers in humans. All is nicely explained. Tomorrow we will do again. I wish you all the best. God bless you. All should go now at the right time for working, and we are not there much work now. So wish them all the best, and all people in other parts of the world today. Blessings of Mahāprabhujī. All the best. Śānti, Śānti, Śānti.