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Welcome to the Palace of the Lord of the Rings! Welcome, our guests! In Slovenia, in the Seaside region, there is a place called Pšenice, Ajde, Prosa, where we grow wheat, buckwheat, and millet. From these, we make good homemade bread, which symbolizes food, happiness, and prosperity, and with which we feed all the people of the world. Please take this as our welcome gift. Thank you. It is homemade from Prekmurje. And this is the salt from which life comes. This is the water, the symbol of life, so that all people in the world would have the possibility to drink healthy and fresh water. Thank you very much. Now we have a light on the altar. This is a special opportunity for the opening of the new ashram of our center. The Maribor Yoga in Daily Life Center covers the northeastern part of Slovenia. It was established in 1990, and we started yoga in Maribor. Soon, just two years later, we started yoga also in Murska Sobota. We are spreading the authentic Yoga in Daily Life, founded by Vishwagurujī. About 45 yoga teachers from our center teach voluntarily; this is not a business. It took us many years to prepare this—to buy this place and prepare it according to our standards. The spirit of yoga is also about spreading tolerance, openness, and love between all people. You have come to Yoga Union Slovenia, which comprises 10 yoga centers where 3,000 people are practicing. I am from Murska Sobota, from this place where we are now. I would like to say something about yoga and music. In 1992, Mr. Lojze was not only a well-known teacher, but he also led the development of our instructors. The best among them, he said, also learned by themselves. Under his guidance, we got the first five instructors. All these instructors continued his guidance and taught five more new ones, guiding the exercises and teaching new yoga teachers to continue the work. Yoga in Daily Life is still taught in Murska Sobota and local areas. For 25 years we were teaching Yoga in Daily Life in rented places like gyms. Now we are most happy that we can practice and teach Yoga in Daily Life in our own place, which is our home, and we can work as we wish. This ashram is very helpful for our teachers and all of us. In the coming session, we have 23 teachers from here who are practicing, and 11 children. For a small place like Murska Sobota, with 13,000 people, this is a really big success. In the name of all yoga societies and the union, I wish that all people feel well in this ashram, that they practice well, and that they will be able to live well within the system of Yoga in Daily Life, which is the authored work of our dear Master. When I thought about what to say today, I felt the best would be to speak about the modern way of life, in which it is necessary to find inner peace. I think they were great in that—they were able to find a nice place for the ashram here at the back of the hall, a place where they can have access to yoga. When we think about the quick pace of modern society, my thought comes to a specific saying by the Dalai Lama. When asked, "What is the biggest surprise you find in life?" he said, "Man." The big surprise for him is the human being, because he sacrifices his life to earn money, and then he sacrifices the money to get back the health he lost by gaining the money. He lives in the current time, but all the time he thinks about the future. He is not able to enjoy the present. I would like to wish all the guests and everybody who will come to this place to practice, to find inner balance—physical and mental—and, as Yoni Saha said, to come regularly to practice. I am very happy and honored to be here at this moment, inaugurating this ashram. I give you greetings and congratulations from India. I am an ambassador of India to only one country. Swāmījī is our ambassador in many countries. Thanks to him, I have met some of you even in Slovakia. The day I landed in Slovenia, I met some of you at the airport. This love from you has been visible to me even before I came here. Thank you very much. Now Swāmījī is here, so in front of him I should perhaps not speak about yoga, as here is the expert. But I would only like to say that this is not specific to one country or one religion. Yoga is universal. So I see your centers—this center and other centers—not only as centers of Yoga in Daily Life, but as centers of universal brotherhood. It is this message of peace and togetherness which comes from your centers, which I hope will continue. Once again, thank you very much and congratulations. Lead us from darkness to light; lead us from mortality to immortality. Your Excellency, the respected mayor of the city, our President of the Slovenian Yoga in Daily Life, the President of this district, our dear Dayāl Purī, our Sugan Purī, respected brothers and sisters, and junior ministers. It is a beautiful day today. I am very happy and delighted to see all of you. This is what they call Vāstu Śāstra. Yoga is a very ancient science. Yoga begins from Satyugas. There are many Satyugas; there is a cycle of the Yugas: Satyuga, Dvāparayuga, Tretā-yuga, and Kali-yuga. The first who was created or manifested—when there were no creatures—was the Svayambhū, the Śiva. The definition of Śiva is light, soul, and sound. In the entire endless universe, Śiva manifested himself. He has no mother and no father. He was not born, but he manifested. When he appeared, he was just in meditation, mudrā. And the first word that he said was "Oṁ." Oṁ karvindu sayuktaṁ nityaṁ dhyāti yogināṁ kāṁ nāma mokṣiṇāṁ sevoṁ karaye namo namaḥ. That was the mantra. So yoga came with Śiva. Yoga means balance, harmony, and unity. Respected Prime Minister of India, Mr. Modi, often speaks in his speeches about yoga, not as only an exercise, but as a science. He said that especially, this is a science of the body, mind, soul, and consciousness. What we call in our Yoga in Daily Life is that yoga is a science of body, mind, and soul. Yoga is knowledge of the body, soul, and spirit. Yoga is a bright future for mankind, if they will use it. Then we come to our children. The children are the culture of tomorrow. It is very important nowadays, in this modern world, that children need to be educated by the parents in spirituality, ethics, and morals. Only the parents can teach the children. And that is also a part of yoga. Yoga does not count in this modern way of religion. These religions, what we call them, are not more than maybe a few thousand years old. But what is a religion? Is that a relation? Realize your relation is the religion. It means, realize thyself with the Supreme. Then we will understand what religion is. But nowadays, religion is a different philosophy. It is not bad, it is good, but yoga is beyond that. Yoga does not fix or connect with a particular religion. And if every religion is a branch of yoga, then consider the sun and the sun rays. Yoga is like the bright sun, but the rays are coming from the different parts of the world of the sun. Our main aim to practice yoga here is to have good health. Some philosopher said, "Health is not everything. Everything is nothing without health." We cannot gain health from external things. We have to learn yoga and get help from within ourselves. One master said, "Within you is the immortality of the ocean. Within you is the fountain of joy, and within you is the immortal soul. Live divine life and be happy and relaxed." We should practice yoga, also not as a kind of sport. Yoga does not have a competition; it has no challenge, and it is not something like an acrobatic exercise. Yoga has to be practiced very carefully and slowly. Every age of a person has a different yoga. One can practice yoga in any conditions, even if you are in the hospital lying in bed. There are yoga exercises if your body is not movable at all. You can use your willpower and mentally give the instruction to thyself. You need the willpower. Once someone told me a story, and some of you know this person. He is from Africa, and he had some problem with his legs. He was paralyzed, but he wanted to win the Olympic Games, and he did it three times in a marathon. I don’t know the name of the person. He has only artificial legs, but he wins the Olympics. Similarly, we need inner willpower. Don’t give up. Don’t give up anything, except the drugs and alcohol. In Slovakia and Slovenia, there is a lot of alcohol. Someone said there is one person who is the best one. He is on the other side of Slovenia. One day he brought me to his house. I don’t drink alcohol, but he persuaded me so much, "Swāmījī, you must try." I said no, I don’t need it. He said, "It’s not that alcohol, what people think." So he brought me to drink half a glass. The taste in my life—nothing happened to me. It was something bitter and something like soda water, that’s all. But it is that we need our willpower. People think, "I have no time for practicing yoga." It is not true. We have 24 hours in a day and night. What are we doing in these 24 hours? Who is the lucky one who can sleep eight hours? But sleep eight hours, please. Have a lot of work? Okay, then work eight hours in your office. If everyone works eight hours, the economy of your country will go on. But we are escaping ourselves from the work. Okay, that is 16 hours. But still, you have eight hours. When we fly from here to Singapore, it takes eight hours. How many times are we looking at the watch? We sleep, we are tired, we get up, we eat two times, still boring—8 hours. Okay, for shopping? One hour. Cooking, eating—two hours, but still you have five hours. Okay, one hour, two hours for your children. Which is a lucky child that a parent gives attention to for two hours? We put the children in kindergarten. At home, we feed them and put them in bed, but still, two and a half hours remain. What are you doing with that? So at least use one and a half hours to practice everything, and one hour you have for your hobby. So time, we have enough. There is no willpower. You say you have no time. But a person who is a smoker, he or she is very busy, but will find the time to go outside quickly and smoke and drink. Also, the alcoholics, they say, "I have no time," but they do have time to sit and drink alcohol. Why can we not find good time for our good health—physical, mental, social, and spiritual? Yoga is yoga, but why did I put the name Yoga in Daily Life? It means practice every day, yoga in daily life. It is the system, and the further you go, the further you go. So we practice here for our good health: physical, mental, social, and spiritual health. I wish that you will practice every day. You can come once or twice here, but in reality, you have to practice at home. If one day you can’t practice, you have no time. All right. On that day, you should not eat also, because you have no time. The next day, you have no time to practice yoga, so you will also not eat. So yoga should become a part of our nourishment, of our health, for concentration, to develop the memory. Yoga is the science of body, mind, and soul. If you practice for 15 days, then your body will call you every day to come and practice yoga. If you are addicted to yoga, is it healthy? If you are addicted to something, what we call drugs, that’s not healthy. I wish you all the best, and I am very happy that our President of Yoga in Daily Life of Slovenia and our Dayāl Purī brought this beautiful yoga center here. And the wise mayor of the city came, and we are very happy that he is here. I think he will see this room here many times, and he will inspire many of his people in this village. And also yoga for the children. Children are the culture of tomorrow, and yoga is the bright future of mankind. Dear sisters and brothers, thank you for inviting me here. I wish that under this roof, hundreds and thousands of people will come and be here in good health, peace, and harmony. I pray to the Almighty for the well-being of this village, the citizens of the village, and the surrounding villages. God bless you. I will chant one mantra. Oṁ asato mā sadgamaya tamaso mā jyotirgamaya mṛtyormā amṛtaṁ gamaya Oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ