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On our spiritual path, there are many examinations and many goals to be reached. One of these goals is to take part in the examination for a certificate of yoga teacher. For those who have this certificate, I would like to express my great honor, because to succeed and manage in getting a certificate is really a great, great achievement. And for those who want or wish to do it in the future, I would like to motivate, as one who was doing this certificate today. I don’t know how it will come, but what was most important and most beautiful was the whole procedure of preparing for this examination. It was divine joy by itself, divine joy in having the possibility and guidance by our dear master and masters of our spiritual lineage to be able to improve and broaden the knowledge in the spiritual wisdom of yoga, and especially in yoga in daily life. Thank you very much, Swāmījī. Thank you. Abhayanand, Hungarian Abhayanand, also introduce your name, country, how long you have practiced, and how it has helped you to overcome your illness. Hari Om. Praṇām Gurudev, dear brothers and sisters. I’m Abhayanand. I am a disciple of Swamiji since 1986. And through these decades of being his disciple, it was really a very nice time, a joy. It’s such a valuable thing to be a disciple of a master, such a spiritual master as Swāmījī. I thank God every day in my prayers that I can be His disciple. Here in Štýřice, we are doing, one of the group is doing usual yoga in daily life practices, and the other part of the group is doing spiritual sādhanā called Kriyānusthān. Yes, thank you very much. Something personal that Swamiji asked me to talk about: I had a serious illness a few years back due to some personal problems. I had a colorectal cancer problem. It nearly cost my life, and there was a chance and possibility that I would leave this physical world sooner. But through the blessing of Swāmījī, Mahāprabhujī, all our spiritual masters, and through the blessing of the wisdom of yoga, which we are learning from Swāmījī, I could overcome this problem. And in everyday life, yoga is a big support for all of us to get strength, to get health, and to get energy for everyday work. I work as a software engineer, and if I do prāṇāyāma regularly, then I write better software code. If I don’t do prāṇāyāma, then I’m just sitting in front of the computer and doing nothing. So if you want to be successful, I cannot tell you anything else, but there is a very good secret for this. If you want to be successful in your life, there is a secret for this, and this secret is called system yoga in daily life. From which country? Sorry, I didn’t mention. I am from Hungary, from Budapest. Thank you. I think the speaker will introduce themselves. Hi, my name is Sītā. I am from the Czech Republic, from Písek, living in Brno. And my English is very poor, and I ask my brother to translate it into the English language. And now, to the subject. I am also Swamiji’s disciple from 1986. My first years were beautiful. I was full of enthusiasm. But then suddenly, after six years, it was in India. But it became myself to grow. It was firing like a big volcano. I was very angry, and fortunately, after a few days, I managed to overcome this nature or mood. To overcome this quality, it wasn’t easy. And only after my coming back from India, I realized to whom this anger belongs. That Swāmījī helps me to become free of this quality. If sometimes some qualities are growing in myself, I often realized how I lived before I got to know Swamiji. And how all my life has changed after I met him. And then I am trying to realize which wrong quality I should be aware of, and I am trying to get rid of this quality. And third, I am trying always to realize that, after the 32 years which I have been with Swamijī, I have never heard that Swamijī would do something negative. He is always leading us to behave as good persons and to increase our good qualities. I’m very thankful for this. Thank you. Thank you. Now we have another good yoga teacher and the president of Yoga in Daily Life, who has been in Slovenia for long, long years as a practitioner. Our dear Erwin. Praṇām Swāmījī. Praṇām all yoga friends, sisters and brothers, not only here but all over the world. I am Erwin Poredoš, Ānanda, Swamiji’s disciple, for a little more than 20 years. And I practice yoga otherwise more than 25 years, but when I started with Swamiji, I started again, of course, from the beginning. And I can tell you all that we are all, I can say for myself, that I’m starting again and again from the beginning. And also, this seminar, it is... My 20th year-by-year intensive seminar, I can say that as it is the first time. I thank Swamiji, not only in my name, but in the name of all of us, for this beautiful place which we have in the Czech Republic, here near Brno. It is so beautiful and gives us so many beautiful hours and days, again and again. And I wish for all our friends, yoga brothers and sisters all around the world, to join us, of course, next year, in the years to come. And all of you that join the intensive seminar here, we have many programs for beginners, for juniors, for all kinds of people. But if you really want to progress spiritually, then we have to always come to Swāmījī and use this possibility to intensively work on ourselves. Again and again, thank you for all these blessings, Swamiji, and your lotus feet. Thank you and greetings to all of our friends from here and all around the world. I’m from Serbia, my name is Padminī, and I’m 19 years old. I have been visiting yoga seminars since I was five. Every summer and during the year, here or in every seminar, we learn a lot of good things. First of all, we learn how to practice discipline and how to gain more good qualities, such as tolerance, love, and respect for all creatures and beings which God has created. Swamiji, the thing which I like also is Yoga Youth Union. It has some special program every year, usually during the summer or in some other months. And there, all the juniors can say something about what they’re interested in. And especially, I’m interested in ecology and tolerance, and we can learn a lot of things on that subject in these seminars. Yes, how did you pass all the schools? Well, I passed all schools with the best marks, and now I applied to the University of Ecology in Novi Sad, my hometown, and I’m looking forward to learning more things and to helping in the world in the way I can. Thank you, greetings. Thank you. Would anyone like to say something? Namaste, Hari. Yes. I don’t know how to start, but we know each other, Svāmījī and I, from ’73. I would like to say that I have a brother who is one year younger than me. Suddenly, he was visiting us. We lived together for 18 years. We lived quite close, so the fate was almost the same. And we lived very closely for 18 years. So the destiny was very much the same for us. And when I met Swamiji, something changed; life became much wider. I started to think over Swāmījī’s teachings, and I know how my brother is thinking, and I know that my mind has changed. And suddenly, I would say, the closest ones, who are like a family to him, suddenly move away, because they do not follow the direction that Swāmījī teaches us. That follows the same thing that I am following. And for me, I do not understand English at all. And thanks to my mantra, which I received at the beginning, I was able to endure a lot of critical situations in my life. And this mantra is like a line which connects me directly to Swāmījī. And this gift has no end. As much as you practice, this relationship becomes much stronger. And that’s why I would like to thank Swāmījī for all that he taught us. And I wish to myself and to all of us, all of us, that we would reach some aim in our spiritual trying, in our spiritual life. Thank you, Katrin. So, now we have some also very nice, devoted, very great personalities coming from China, practicing yoga in their lives. She’s a teacher of yoga in their life, and she has a lot of life experiences, you can see. So perhaps she will tell our juniors and us some instructions, being from the Far East culture, behind India, you know, behind India from this side. My name is Swāmījī, and greetings to my good brothers and sisters. I cannot tell you the feelings I am having right now. I think I am really in tears when I hear the last person who is telling his story, and I had the same feeling when I was hearing that. I came from Vancouver. First, I have to introduce myself. My yoga name is Dayā, and just to tell you my feeling yesterday, I was longing to come here, and my journey was quite unusual yesterday. It seems like I was never going to get here because when I arrived, my plane was delayed, and my connecting flight, the flight I was taking, was almost gone. And I didn’t think I could make it yesterday from London. But in my heart, I knew I would come here because I’m longing to come here to see this āśram. And when on my way, I was all nervous and getting into something really, really indescribable. I didn’t know what I was feeling, but the feeling was indescribable when I got here, and I knew why, because I see Guru Dev and I’m also in Mahāprabhujī’s āśram, and I think that is more than enough I can say, but I met Swāmījī not so long ago when Swāmījī came to Vancouver, when our āśram opened, and then I had been practicing yoga in the past, but not until I came to Yoga in Daily Life did I know how different it was. I was practicing intensely for two years, every day in the āśram, and that brought me to Swamiji, and thank you to Swamiji. Thank you for the honor that Swamiji has given me, to make me a yoga teacher. But I must say, I’m humble to think that I really didn’t know, but each time when I teach, I learn more and more about myself. Through yoga, by teaching, I even feel more and more through the blessing of Swāmījī and the grace of Mahāprabhujī, and I’m just so overwhelmed right now. I am absolutely speechless, and again, I am one of those also, like the... First, I’m very internalized, but through teaching yoga, I become a little bit more open. My feelings, through feeling yoga, and I can express myself better that way. And through my mantra, I have a lot of also traveling. Like Swamiji, I have been traveling for about 40 years in my life to every different country. I have lived everywhere in Europe, in Africa, in Asia. And I also feel, Swamījī, traveling all the time must be exhausting. But I must say, through this traveling also, I come to know many people. And today when I’m here, I see all these different people from different countries, and we are one together, and I feel so honored to be in this yoga and daily life. But through my last few years, my life situation had changed a lot, and I was encountering a lot of difficulties, and I was so blessed to have met Swamiji. I really understand it was through mantra. Again, I cannot tell you how important mantra is, that I really, again, connected to Swamiji. Somehow, through many situations, it is through my mantra that I can find ways of dealing with situations. And through mantra, also through Swamiji coming to me, that I come to solve situations, and also I come to know myself better through this whole system of yoga and daily life. And through our Guru, Devpurījī, I so... Deeply and sincerely, thank you, Swamiji, for your blessing and for being in yoga and daily life. I’d like to thank you all for this big family. And I, in Vancouver, we are a small, small group of disciples. And so I hope all of you can come when Swāmījī comes to visit us. I really would like to invite all of you to come to Vancouver to see our small āśram. But Vancouver is an extremely beautiful place like this, all the treetops, water, and mountains. So, I hope all of you can join us sometime when you can. Thank you all, and thank you, Gurudev. Thank you. Triguna Dās Levy. Thank you, Catherine. She is the right hand of Swami Gajananda. Yes. And Catherine is a very experienced person, traveled around the world, tried many things, and is a very pure-hearted person. Now we have one Trigunadāsa coming from Prague. Most beautiful city, golden city of Europe, heart of Europe, Prague. I am very surprised that I should say something. My wife and I, we are disciples of Swamiji a little bit more than 10 years. We started with yoga, Ilija, my wife, 15 years ago, something, maybe 20 years ago, my mom, me, something like 12 years ago, but the real start was with Swāmījī, with his guiding. I am very happy that I am here today for this wonderful time, and I would like to say thank you very much to Swāmījī for this beautiful ten years, and I hope for more decades in the future. From my personal view, it’s very important that we can say to other people that there is another style of life, a style which is positive not only to humans, a style which is positive to nature, to the animals, to all people, to all creation. I am very happy that we are connected with a very old Indian tradition, a very old and authentic Indian tradition, which is here in the person of our Swāmījī, of our beloved Gurudev. So it’s everything which I can say, and thank you very much for your time, and thank you very much, Swāmījī. Thank you. Śrī Dīp Nyāyām Bhagavān Kī, Deveśvar Mahādev Kī, Dharma Samrāṭ Satguru Svāmī Madhavānanjī Gurudev Kī, Satya Sanātana Dharma Kī. Good evening to everybody. Good evening, dear Bhaktas, devotees, brothers, sisters, and spiritual seekers around the world. I thought today that some of our yoga and daily life practitioners will tell their feelings and their opinions. You know, you never know when something will come. If I had told them in the morning that you have to speak in the evening, they would have written three or four pages about what they would speak. But what comes suddenly, then what is the essence from everything, speaks from your heart. And you know, in this modern world, there are certain events which have a nice background music. And so, in this multi-stars hall, you have automatically some beautiful background music. You see, every tune, every sound is a sound. There is no, what they call, misclang. There is no wrong sound. Only how you perceive depends on you. And so Patañjali, speaking about kliṣṭa or akliṣṭa vṛttis, the thoughts which disrupt you and the thoughts which help you. Now, the question is, in what way does that external sound, visions, or smells disturb you? Maybe that you don’t like that, but it must not be that everything should be what you like. If everything were to be like what you like, the world would be paralyzed. Even the husband and wife cannot coordinate themselves together in certain things. What she likes, he doesn’t like, and what he likes, she may not like. Liking and disliking, this is the problem. What you don’t like, you feel is disturbing you. But someone who likes creates the sound, like that. Therefore, Patañjali is saying, Withdraw your senses and be one with thyself, with your own inner sound. Then suddenly, what will happen is that you will not hear anymore those sounds which you think are disturbing. Long ago, I think it was ’75 or ’76, In Prague, in the university clinic or the biggest hospital, there was working one doctor. His name was Dostalík. He is a very well-known scientist. He had been traveling many times to India. Very open-minded person, very clear-minded person. And he himself is also a practitioner of yoga. That time, you know, I used to come often to Czechoslovakia, more than now. About that we will talk after. So Dr. Dostalík and his other colleagues, they want to know how a yogī, when he is meditating, how his brain waves are. And they will put so many wires, you know, here and here and here and here and here. You know, you saw yesterday in the video, Nārada was saying, "Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi." Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi means I am Brahman. Nothing can touch me, nowhere am I attached, I am above ignorance. Everything, whatever is happening, is just a body. The body is mortal, but I am immortal, above the fear, everything. Yes, it should be like that, but it isn’t like that always. Thanks to God, it comes in the last minutes of life, such a state of being. Though you have some glimpse of the knowledge of the Brahman, that you can say, ahaṁ brahmāsmī, brahmaniṣṭha śrotriya. But the vṛtti is changing constantly. The view is changing constantly. The position is changing. The situation is changing. Thought is changing. Feeling is changing. Constantly there is a change, not only on this planet, but in the entire universe. The constellation is changing. Everything is in movement. It’s very hard to be on that one fixed place, thought, idea, or feeling. So you may say that Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi, but it doesn’t last long. But if you say, "Yes, I am Brahman, I have knowledge of the Brahman," you should know there is a Brahmin, which is a caste. Brahmā is a creator, and Brahman is the universal God, the entire universe, above all trinities and everything. That’s called Brahman. Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi, that I am that Brahman. Yes, you and me, often we had experiences of Brahman. You had, many of you had a glimpse of that Brahman, that nectar, when you came to me, got a mantra, or in satsaṅg, different. In one way, you got that divine immortality, the nectar. There are many kinds of amṛta, but at the same time, the opposite vṛttis come. It’s like you want to fly in one direction with a flight, an airplane without an engine, and suddenly opposite air comes. So there are our vṛttis, our changes in this body, which create different waves, meaning uncertainty. Should I or should I not? Is that right or wrong? Should I take it or not? Yes. This question arises from our ignorance: why, how, and so on. So while practicing meditation with mantra, while studying beautiful ancient yogic literatures about God consciousness, about this entire creation—body, emotion, thoughts, fear, memory, intellect, anger, hate, jealousy, conflicts, fear—and further, the consciousness, different levels of the consciousness, and so on. So, one after another, layer is hidden in us. Well, that time, 1975, I was a little younger than now. So to say, the horses were young and wild; it was not easy to keep them on that track. And, you know, sometimes when you know little things, then you would like to say that you know all, challenging these, that. And I was practicing every day, minimum six hours, by heart: yoga kriyās, āsanas, prāṇāyāmas, meditations, and so on, mantras and all, minimum. Doesn’t matter where I was. I was solid in myself, sure, and now I was sitting in a small room and doctors tried to put all these wires here and there and there, and I said to Mahāprabhujī, Please control the electricity. You know my heartbeat, I said, "What? When they will put on, what will happen if they cranked the flexibility in the electricity?" No chance. If one wire, maybe you try quickly to pull it out, but here and here and... here. I say to Mahāprabhujī, In this physical form, I hope it is not a last praṇām. Now, you see how suddenly fear came. I was surprised, surprised. I thought I have no fear in me. Similarly, you will think that you have no jealousy. You are above jealousy. I wouldn’t say so. The best thing is we are in a good position to surrender, yes. And completeness comes in the last minutes of life. Now they ask me, "Swāmījī, can you meditate and try to influence or keep your citta vṛtti nirodha, meaning one thought?" I said, "Yes, I will do it," but I was afraid of the electric wires. My heartbeat was stronger. Then I said, "Do you think that I will feel the current?" He said, "No, no, you will feel nothing, Swamijī." I said, "Are you sure? Or will you put on high volume?" He said, "No, no, Swāmījī, that’s not like that." Well, I did some prāṇāyāmas: kapālabhāti, bandha and uḍḍīyana bandha, then jālandhara bandha, mahā bandha, and influenced my chakras to let the prāṇa and apāna flow in balance. And I sat in meditation. What they did, they put a big bulb light on and off, on and off in front of me, and then they put some kind of sound, boop, boop, then zzzz. You know, to change, to feel how the brain waves will change or not. Yes, I listened, and I made it like this. Then I said, "No, now I am in mahā-ānanda." Nothing exists around me, and in that minute, though they were making light and sound, it was completely balanced. They gave me the printout and the result; somewhere I have it in my records. Perhaps it will come in the book one day. Then they gave me the time, and I said how long it should be. After I said my ending will be through the chanting of the OM, three times I will chant. Well, I had no problem sitting long. I was sitting in lotus. I had only 55 kilos, and I was nearly 88 kilos, and it was, no? Everything, my dear, you know, you spoiled me with the cake, sandwich, cheese, and this and that. And in the ex-Yugoslavia, the Kajmak, oh, Gokur Utsa and the Kajmak, and the Swamiji, Prashim Swamiji, one more Swamiji. You see, then one great yogī said, "All indriyas can be under control, but the tasting indriyas are very hard to control." Anyhow, I chanted Oṁ, and they noticed that at the time of chanting Oṁ along the spinal column, there was such a lightning and vibration which they never experienced with anything. They had many, many experiments, and they did many things. So that is how God Kṛṣṇa said in the Bhagavad Gītā, a yogī should be like a turtle. A turtle is an animal who can, at any time, take his limbs in or, at any time, expand the limbs out. Similarly, all these vṛttis around you, gasping, talking, saying, it should never disturb you. It comes to you and goes to you. Sometimes you sit somewhere and a bad smell comes. What will you do? Avoid. You go away. Don’t remain there and bad smell, bad smell, bad smell. You should not cry for that. So, master thyself. Master the situation and withdraw your senses. That’s why any time a yogī can be extroverted, or any time can be introverted. Therefore, for the meditation, kāya is sthairyam, the steadiness of the body. If one finger is moving, it is creating immense waves of disturbance in your aura. You think it doesn’t matter, I can do like this. It does matter. Let’s say, many times I’m so much admiring this modern technology, which is exactly like yogīs used to say. And Krishna said, "Not a blade of grass can move without my will, my energy." All these leaves of the trees and wind, and this all is by Almighty God. Nothing is hidden to me, O Arjuna. In the entire universe, there is nothing which I cannot have. But still, I am acting; I am doing karma. So, how do vṛttis disturb? How can a yogī control vṛttis? You know, now we have an alarm system, yes? An alarm system in the house. And you sit in the range of the alarm, very peacefully, without any movement. If you move one finger, the alarm will be on. Similarly, in meditation, if you just move with your lips, your whole aura, your beautiful energy is disturbed, and then there is a gap between the waves, and then different thoughts enter your consciousness, your citta, and then your vṛttis become more and more. Someone said a butterfly can cause a hurricane. When the very silent butterfly flies through her wings, a little wind starts, and then it starts and supports and can become a very big hurricane. So little thought, little things, little negative speech or seeing can cause you lots of trouble and can push you down, or little things can uplift your consciousness. When someone cannot swim and falls in the water, there is a very thin thread somewhere hanging, and he or she will hold the thread and then can pull oneself out of the water. That’s it. So learn to have a steady posture, upright, straight upright, so that your spine is straight. Then you will see, when you are doing chakrasodhana or other kriyās or prāṇāyāmas, how the energy is flowing. But mostly, I see inside you are sitting like this, doing your anuṣṭhāna, chakrasodhana. This morning I was doing prāṇāyāma with you, and then I got so tired, I was also sleeping like this. And two girls were sitting, these little girls there, they said, "Oh, Swamijī is sleeping." I said, "Oh, they were thinking Swamiji is sleeping, but I got it loud." So, first, master your body, so that at least one, two hours you can sit. Yes, then everything is balanced, negative energy is filtered, mantra is going on, and then the consciousness is uplifting. Doing little things and then nothing, that’s okay, better than nothing, but it will not solve our problems, nor will it help us achieve our destination. Therefore, prepare today and tomorrow, eat little. I tell you, if it’s possible, avoid the grains, avoid the bread especially in the evening. Eat little bread or little rice; eat some different hot soup or something. Morning, you will be full of vitality and will be sitting like this. So, many friends have been telling their life experiences, how they were practicing, how they met. Many, they didn’t speak too much. The people whom I ask, if they would like to speak, they are very great speakers, you know. If I’m not sitting here, they will talk and talk. It will be very hard to stop them. It’s like a turbo engine; you can’t stop easily. So everyone is full of wisdom, but they respect the time, they respect the audience, and I respect our international audience. Today, now the sun is shining; it’s a very nice afternoon. Again, people will say, from Jhadan they were telling me, "Swamiji, all hair is completely white and looks like 90 years." Now, yeah, when I look like this, I will look 110 years perhaps. So that is a miracle of the sun, you know, the sunlight. It can make you nicely old. So if you want to be sitting like this, like I’m sitting in front of the camera, it will be nice. So, what I mean is that reading or experiencing something, that is not all. Slowly, slowly, step by step, we have to become solid. This tree where we are sitting, I think, is about 10 or 20, 22 meters long, or maybe more. But when this first time the seed sprouted, it was so gentle, it couldn’t stand. Easily, you could have been broken or destroyed if you stepped on it. But today, slowly, slowly, the tree grows, becomes a huge, big tree, and even you can lean on the tree. Tree has a solid trunk. Similarly, day by day, practicing. Practicing posture, straight posture, kāya is sthairyam, then the experiences will come. Your citta vṛtti is preparing in chidākāśa, some kind of preparation, some experiences, but suddenly you move, the waves are gone. That’s it. So rest after your dinner, evening satsaṅg. Today we will be on the meadow, in the free sky, the open sky. Wish you a very good appetite for your dinner. And to all other international bhaktas, wish you all the best, and God bless you. See you tomorrow at the same time.