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Hari Om, dear brothers, sisters, and friends who are with us here from the holy motherland India, especially here from our Aum Ashram in Jadan, Rajasthan. As we know, Rajasthan is a tapabhūmi, a land of austerity. It is not easy to live here, and this, really, I cannot explain. Many of us have been here in Rajasthan, especially in the ashrams. This time, when I was here for nearly three weeks, I had no special duty. I just came; I just was here. Once I asked Swāmījī, "Swāmījī, I don’t have any special duty. What should I do?" Because when one has a special duty, then one feels important. Swāmījī answered, "It’s enough for you to be here." This time was also like that, and it was not easy because I was used to doing certain things automatically. To get unused to doing something, or to sometimes do nothing, is more difficult than doing something. But I had time to go around, to see and observe many things, and also to observe myself. I saw the beauty of everything and also the differences in behavior among people. This was sometimes a surprise for me; there was an "aha" effect. How the behavior of people is different, but you are the same person. There is no difference. Then you learn how people are. You learn exactly to know who is who and how someone is. And how am I myself? This was the best experience in my life. Of course, I had more time to practice my mantra, more time to think about myself, more time to find out the connection between Gurū Dev and myself, to discern what is important and what is not. And also here in the ashram—I don't speak now of material things—just now Swāmījī was asking to translate or explain one bhajan, and I always come to this bhajan from Swāmī Śivānandajī. He was writing a bhajan about śabda, about words, and even about words without words. We have the language of the body, the language of the face, the language of mimicry and gesture. This is all a language. We need not say anything, and we know everything. Many of us here are yoga teachers. As a yoga teacher, when a person comes in, we see their condition. How is this? In that way, we treat the person who comes to the yoga class for help, because nobody comes for nothing. We have this beautiful bhajan from Mahāprabhujī about Yoga Nidrā. Swāmījī gave some words to explain what Yoga Nidrā means. It is such a great technique. It is not these stories told here and there that we know about Yoga Nidrā. That is nice, but it is not Yoga Nidrā. Yoga Nidrā is a meditation in a lying position, but there is something more. Once I was practicing Yoga Nidrā regularly because it helped me very much to get rid of certain emotions. I used cassettes, tapes. Now it's not anymore, but I still have them. Every day in the afternoon, I was practicing and practicing. I always had the feeling I would fall asleep. I thought, "I'm falling asleep; I don't hear what Swāmījī is talking about." Once I had a great idea. I put the tape in the car's tape recorder, thinking, "In the car I cannot fall asleep. Now I will listen and I will know what Swāmījī is talking about." I was driving with Yoga Nidrā. Of course, I was listening, and there was an accident because the Yoga Nidrā works. I was practicing it, and I was not fully aware. Suddenly, it happens. Because in Yoga Nidrā we come into that state between conscious and unconscious. But we don't go into the unconscious; we are in between, in the empty space. There we try to catch that point when sleep is coming. But this is another subject. Swāmī Śivānandajī says, "Those are my relatives, those are my friends who understand my words, who understand me—not this physical body, but me, myself." Those are my real ones. Swāmī Śivānandajī says through these words: if there are no words, how do we understand who is Brahmā, who is God, who is Mahāprabhujī? Swāmījī was explaining the life of Mahāprabhujī, how he was, how he is. He gave us a picture through words; even if we don't have pictures of Mahāprabhujī, for example, we can imagine through the words how it was. People are still asking, "Who knows Mahāprabhujī, how he was?" Through words, I can ask someone. We have a question; we ask through words, and we get the explanation through words, the answer. We have lost the knowledge of telepathy. We don't have this knowledge anymore. In meditation, we are not so far that we get this knowledge. So we still have our physical body, the mouth, and words so that we can ask and get the answer. And we say, "Ah, like this." Also, Swāmī Śivānanda said that through these words we have language, different kinds of languages, which bring us together. Here, Mahāprabhujī says in one bhajan; he explains satsaṅg and kusaṅg, what satsaṅg means for us. The first time I had an experience of how I miss satsaṅg was a little bit of a hard time when we were in Nepal, in Bokhara, alone there. Then slowly, slowly our yoga people came, people came, and I was so happy. I was so happy that people came and we could have satsaṅg again. Swāmījī was there, people came, there was not so much space, but we were sitting together, we had satsaṅg, we were singing, we were together. It doesn't matter how the space was; we were together with people who have the same feeling, the same interests, who are on the same path. This means satsaṅg. And now again we have the same time, the Corona time. I hear from every side, now when I go back to Europe, there is lockdown. Again, we can't come together, again we can't sit together. But thanks to technology—what is this technology? We can at least come together on Zoom or whatever, to see each other from a far distance. Mahāprabhujī says in his bhajan and gives examples. For instance, the fish: when you take it out of the water, what does this mean for the fish? It is out of its element. Like when we are in water, we try with all our power to come out to get air again. Here Mahāprabhujī says, "Imagine the fish. You take him out of the water. He is struggling, struggling, suffering, crying. Please, bring me back into the water." Like this fish, we have this pain and suffering without satsaṅg—the longing, the longing. He also gives an example, Mahāprabhujī, about a swan who lives in the Maṇasarovara Lake, very high up near Mount Kailāśa. This swan doesn't eat various things; it is the Paramahaṁsa. It's not a simple swan; this is the Paramahaṁsa. He is not eating ordinary things. He wants to have something special. He's waiting, waiting. He's hungry; he's fasting. There is a shell living. This shell produces a pearl only from a special nectar which falls from the sky. This shell is waiting for this nectar to produce the pearl, waiting and waiting. Like the birds waiting for the rain and crying, "Pīu, pīu, pīu," he does not drink the water from the lake; he drinks only the water which falls from the sky. This is the longing for those bhaktas, for sattva, guru sattva, to be together with all these sattvas. "Oh my, how much I'm longing for my satsaṅg." He, Prabhujī, was writing this bhajan when one day there was satsaṅg and only a few people were there. "Prabhujī, where are all these people? Where are all my satsaṅgīs? Where are they?" Then came this bhajan. And so Swāmī Śivānandajī says, through these words, only through the words, we understand what Saguṇa and Nirguṇa mean: God in form and God without form, only through words. Otherwise, our brain cannot understand. And what means God, and what means Māyā, the illusion? What means the truth and what means the untruth? Swāmī Śivānandajī said, with these words we will cross the endless ocean. In one bhajan it is written: without jñāna we cannot have mukti, we cannot have liberation—of course, with the blessing of the Guru. So, only these two bhajans and some of my experience now here in this short time—three weeks is just nothing. We were here for the opening, the reopening, of the beautiful Śiva temple near our Siddha Pīṭha in Barikathu in Gajras. Beautiful. The ceremony of Avatārpuri was also on Dīvālī, the festival of lights. Then we had the great luck—I had the great longing to make again my praṇām in Kailāś Āśram. We were not there for a long time, many years, I think three years. We could not be there; winter is very cold. This time, at least, we could have the darśan; we could be there. Then back to Jadan here. To see everything—two years when I was not here, many things changed. Good, many things, thanks to God, are the same. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān, Śrī Śrī Devīśvarānanda, Mahādeva, Kī Jai.