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Praṇām Gurudev, Hari Om, dear brothers and sisters. It is truly wonderful to start the morning with yoga. And if we have the opportunity to begin the morning, even just for a few seconds before rising from bed, with positive thoughts, it can change our entire life. Most people say it is good not to start the morning with our little electronic devices. We learned from Viśva Gurujī that it is important to start the morning with one thought: "I am a human." When Swamiji began emphasizing this years ago—ten, even twenty years ago—it was, I think, a small surprise for each of us. "Yes, I am a human. Why repeat this?" But upon deeper reflection, you realize it is very important to be aware of what human quality is and what it means to be human. Because how we live, and how we see people living around us, is sometimes even worse than animal quality. I always remember a story Viśva Gurujī told about a disciple who lived with his guru in the forest. Not often did other people come for the guru's darśan. This disciple lived alone with Gurudev. He heard about a melā and asked Gurudev for permission to go. "To see people," he said, "because living in the forest only with the guru, I need to see people." Gurujī said, "Yes, but you will not see people." The disciple thought, "Okay, Gurujī has lived too long alone in the forest; he is losing touch." He tried to explain to the guru, as we sometimes try to explain to Swamiji: "But Gurujī, there will be thousands and thousands of people." We know this story in our own lives. Gurujī said, "You will not see so many people there. Maybe two, three." The disciple thought the guru had completely lost touch with reality. Gurujī said, "Okay, you may go, but take this peacock feather. When you are at the melā, look through this peacock feather, and sit and talk only with the people you see through it." The man agreed. He walked for a few days and finally saw the village from a slight elevation. He saw thousands upon thousands of people and said, "There are people, a lot of people." Entering the village, surrounded by crowds, he remembered his guru's instruction out of love. He took the peacock feather and looked through it. In that moment, he saw so many animals, rākṣasas. He was startled. He looked again without the feather—so many people. He repeated this experiment with the peacock feather a few times. You know what my favorite question is? "Why?" I remember Āvatāra Purījī when he was just small. His constant question was "Why?" and "How is it possible?" That "Why?" is the best question. The problem for parents is they get fed up with this "Why?" and answer, "Because I said so." That is the worst answer. We should always try to have patience and give a good answer. Why a peacock feather? Because the peacock also symbolizes Śiva, and through the conscience, you will see reality. In one corner, he saw a few people through the feather. He went to that area, and those were people talking about positive things—that means satsaṅg. It is hard to be a human, to develop as a human. You will see many minds living in fear, many snakes full of poison. To be a human is very, very hard. What Viśva Gurujī tries to teach us is to start the morning with the idea, "I am a human." Through our daily practice and spiritual life, we will try to make another step in evolution. That is Kuṇḍalinī Yoga: the evolutionary step from the human to the Divine. It is very important to purify our quality. The most important thing is what we have heard for so many years: "Ahiṃsā paramo dharmaḥ." It is very important to be vegetarian, but not only to be a vegetarian. It is not only that I am not eating meat, but it is very important that when you organize something, you make it vegetarian. Everything that is in your name, everything that you organize, make it vegetarian. Because ahiṃsā paramadharma—non-violence is the highest principle. By keeping just this, what you hear from Viśva Gurujī especially in recent years, this little thing for us makes a huge difference in our life. We are making a big difference. And what we hear from Viśva Gurujī is that just with this, you reserve a much better position in the next life. I remember another story about a disciple traveling with his guru. They traveled constantly, only stopping to sleep when the sun set, and starting again tomorrow morning. One would always stay awake to guard. The guru said to the disciple, "I will guard first, and you will guard later." The disciple immediately fell asleep. The guru was meditating, and in that moment, he saw a snake approaching. The guru said to the snake, "Stop. What do you want?" The snake said, "Praṇām. I must bite your disciple." The guru asked, "Why? Is this some kind of revenge?" "In one life, I bit him, and in another life, he bit me. We are going from life to life." The master said, "Okay, but I do not allow you to bite my disciple." The snake said, "Sorry, but I must." Gurujī asked, "Okay, what will satisfy your revenge?" The snake began to think. The master said, "Do you want to drink a little of his blood?" The snake thought and said, "Okay, yes, that will be enough." Master Gurujī took a knife and went to the disciple to make a small cut. At that moment, the disciple opened his eyes and saw the guru with the knife above him. "What will we do?" That is a very good question. I am not joking. We need to be completely honest with ourselves. Of course, the first answer will be, "I will give." But be honest with yourself. That disciple was a real disciple. He just closed his eyes. The master made a small cut and gave blood to the snake, and the snake went away. The next morning, nothing was said. The disciple was silent in mauna. Gurujī asked the disciple, "How did you sleep?" "Good, good, excellent." "Do you see? Did you see something strange?" The disciple said, "Yes, I saw you with the knife." "And you were not afraid?" The disciple said, "No. Everything that comes from you is a blessing." That is the real disciple who has real confidence in the Master, and is also free from that karma. In one life we are a pig, and in the next life we are killing the pig and eating the pig. All the time it is a circle. To break that, we need to cut the chain of karma. We need to have confidence in our Gurudev, because he will cut the chain of karma. That confidence is very important, but it is also very important to keep purity of ahiṃsā in our life. Today there was also mantra-dīkṣā. In that moment, another very good story came to my mind. It is very important when we decide to be on one path, when we feel a connection with our Gurudev, when we become a disciple. That is for a whole life, not only one life, but for all life. It is a nice story we have heard many times from Viśva Gurujī about a man who decided to do something for his spirituality. He went to a guru and asked for a mantra. He got a mantra. He repeated the mantra for ten years, but nothing happened—no siddhis, nothing. He said, "This guru is weak, this mantra is weak." Just then, another guru with some siddhis came to the village. He changed his guru and mantra. Again, ten years of practice, but nothing. Slowly, slowly, he lost 50 years of his life with 10 different gurus and 15 different mantras. In the end, he was completely disappointed in spirituality. But he had one quality: he remembered who his first master was, because many people do not even remember the name of their guru. At the Kumbh Melā, one swāmī came to me and asked how to become a Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara. I said to him, "Look, you must ask your guru." In the end, I realized he did not know the name of his guru. That is the problem. But that man had that quality. He went to his first guru, very angry, and said, "I have lost 50 years of my life, but nothing happens." That guru said, "You are completely right. But in seven days, I will teach you everything." The man said, "Okay, I have lost 50 years; seven days is nothing. I will stay." But the guru said, "Yes, but these seven days you must completely obey me." The first day, Gurujī said, "In our ashram we need water. Please dig a well here." He dug all day, and in the evening, very tired, he went to sleep. The next morning, after Sarvahitā Āsana to move the body, he was about to start digging again. But Gurujī came and said, "I was meditating, and I saw that half a meter down you will reach a big stone. It will be better to dig on the other side." He dug another whole day in a new spot. You know the story: seven days, seven different places. In the end, the disciple was fed up. In the morning, he was waiting for the guru and said, "What nonsense! If I had dug in only one place, I would have reached water. Now look—your garden is completely full of holes!" Gurujī said, "Yes. That is your answer. If you dig in one place, even if you find a big rock, you will come to the water. But if you dig seven different places every day, in the end you are completely confused." That is a very important thing: have one path, one idea. As they say, you need to live for that idea, breathe for that idea, dream that idea, and you will accomplish it. That is what we need to do. On that way, with such fire as we talked about yesterday, we live our life. And we know we will accomplish our aim—every aim, business, pleasure, yoga. That is the recipe. Here we are not talking about things which in the end bring us suffering, but we are talking about something that will in the end give us freedom, and that is yoga. For us, as disciples, it is important to have confidence and endurance. With the blessing of Gurū Dev, we will come to the aim. We will come: Jīva will merge and become Śiva. Siddhīpāna bhagavāna kījā, śrīyalak pojiti siddhāpit paramparā kījā. Gurudev praṇām, Svāmī praṇām, sestrī a bratṛī praṇām. Gurudev praṇām, Svāmī praṇām, sisters and brothers. I had a short talk yesterday which may not have been completely clear, so I would like to build on it today. After I finished talking, I realized that the yoga system is very individual for each of us. I mean that the spiritual part, the spiritual aspect of yoga in daily life, is our path to the spiritual aim. Mahāmaṇḍalī Svarvivek Purījī explained very nicely one day that what we are doing actually has the form of a pyramid. Each of us has a different way to build the pyramid to which we were invited by the mercy of Gurudev. It is not the same for any two of us. For some people, even after 20 years of effort, it is a small hill of soil; it does not look like a pyramid yet. But with further effort, it will start getting the shape of a pyramid. Other people's approach is to start building the nice pyramid, the bottom layers with all the stones, and they continue building. Other people may take a different approach by doing just the shape of the pyramid. It is something that is sometimes sold—like a pyramid made of wires, so it is completely empty but has the shape. In my opinion, this third option is the least sustainable. Whatever it is made of, if it is wood or something else, it still has holes and is empty. It will work in some way, but the fundamentals are missing. The foundations, the fundamentals, are very important for our spiritual development. So no approach is bad. We are all doing well. Those who are doing the shape without having the fundamentals will, at the end of the day, have to catch up. They will have to make the additional filling of the empty space. Without any visible success, we are still building. We are still adding layer after layer to the pyramid, even though it does not look like it yet. Through physical exercises and meditation, seemingly without fruits, we keep building and filling the structure. When I joined yoga some 23 years ago, I had some previous experience. The first task Viśva Gurujī gave me was to build a fence above the Saṅgam Hall here. I did the project design; a company built it. But the result was that the fence actually had no foundations. There are such supports—you may wonder why there are such sharp support walls. That is the reason: it basically had no basis and would have fallen down. So we had to dig it up again and add the supporting pillars. If you see it today, you may be surprised why a new wall has such supporting pillars. That was the reason: it did not have proper foundations. This led me to the realization that the wall is actually myself. I pretend to be a wall, but I do not have those foundations. So all those 23 years, I have been trying to build the foundations so that I can catch up with you advanced yogīs who have already built the whole pyramid. Thank you for your attention. I would like to thank our Gurū Dev for shaping our pyramid, for leading and directing us. Guru Brahma, Guru Viṣṇu, Guru Devo Maheśvarāḥ, Guru Sākṣātpara Brahma, Tasmai Śrī Gurave Namaḥ. Salutations to the Cosmic Self. Salutations to Śrī Lakhpurījī Siddhāpīṭ Paramparā. My humble greetings to our Gurudev, His Holiness the Guru Mahāmudrā Śrī Maheśvarānand Purījī. Om Namah Nārāyaṇa to Mahāmudrā Śrī Svāmī Vivek Purījī and all the sannyāsīs present here. Hari Om, and good morning to all of you present here and watching through Swamiji TV. As we know, today is Swami Vivekānandajī’s birth anniversary. Swami Vivekānandajī was one of the Swāmīs who brought the philosophy of Vedānta and Sanātana Dharma to America. He was the first monk to do that. He was a disciple of Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṁsa. Ramakrishna Paramahaṁsa was a monk who did not like to interact much with people; he used to always be in his ashram. But through Swami Vivekānanda, his teachings went all across the world. In the same way, Holy Gurujī, Viśva Gurujī, is spreading teachings all across the world. Once in a long time comes such a great yogī who, not for himself but for mankind, spreads the message of his masters and his paramparā to the whole world. Holī Gurujī, Mahāprabhujī, were quite famous in India. But we are blessed to have Gurudev with us, who brought Mahāprabhujī’s teachings and Holī Gurujī’s teachings here in the West and all across the world. Many of us have heard this story from Viśva Gurujī, but I will repeat it today. In 1970, Viśva Gurujī was invited to come to the West for the first time. He had been traveling a lot with Holī Gurujī in India. In one satsaṅg, Holī Gurujī told his disciples, "Do not keep the knowledge you learn within yourself. Anything that you learn, anything that you read, whatever you have within you, you should always give it to others. It does not matter if you read all the four Vedas, all the 18 Purāṇas, Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata—all the scriptures. But if you keep it within yourself, it is of no use. Maybe some people are lazy to read. So if by your words that message can be spread further, then that is the best." Viśva Gurujī received the message in that satsaṅg. He started traveling around India alone, preaching and bringing the light of Śrī Mahāprabhujī. Then he got invited to the United Kingdom. In the early times, in schools in India, they just knew 'J' for Japan and 'G' for Germany, and 'E' for England, because England ruled India. He did not know the whole history, but Gurujī taught him everything. This is the simplicity of the sādhu. Gurudev landed in London with just one thin shawl, a thin kurta, and a lungi. It was cold. If I am right, it was March 1970. His luggage came on another plane to Luton, while he landed at Heathrow. At that time, he did not have fancy suitcases—it was just a metal box. Gurudev did not know much English. They announced that his suitcase was coming from Luton by bus to Heathrow. He asked co-passengers, who translated for him. He took his suitcase and went outside the airport. It was very cold, and he just had rubber slippers on—flip-flops we wear on the beach. His hands started to freeze. They told him, "Open the box. What did you bring?" He took out the key, but he was shivering so much he could not open the lock. Then they said, "Okay, you are free to go." But where to? He did not know the language, did not know where to go. The person supposed to pick him up did not come. It was the middle of the night, about one o'clock in the morning. He waited and waited. Everyone in their lives, in the beginning, has to struggle to achieve what they have. Life is not as easy as we think. If you want to become a great person and achieve something in life, you have to do hard work, go through difficulties, and endure to get what you want. This happens with Icchā Śakti, with Dhṛḍhaniṣṭhā. When we have that wish within ourselves to achieve something, we will achieve it. If at that time Gurudev had said, "Oh, it is too cold, I am going back home," then none of us would be here today. He went through a lot of struggles in the beginning to create what we have now. He did not do this for himself; he did it for all of us. That is what great saints do. They act for the well-being of others, to preach the message of Mahāprabhujī and Holī Gurujī to everyone. Finally, a taxi came with his name on a sign. He understood his name. The taxi dropped him outside a house and said, "Yes, here you are." In his pocket, he did not have a lot of money—maybe five to ten rupees. He said, "How do I pay?" The taxi driver said, "It is already paid." When they reached, it was an apartment building, not a single house. There were many doorbells. He thought, "Which button should I press? If I press the wrong one, something might happen." Someone was passing by. He had the name of the person who invited him. That person said, "Yes, we are waiting, Gurujī. Come up." He went inside but did not know how to use the lift. With that heavy, freezing metal box—steel is cold—he went up the stairs. The airport had central heating, but when he reached the household, it was heated. He got nice chai, and they made a place for him to sleep in the living room. In the morning, he got up early, as he was used to. London is not like here; it is much darker in the morning. Here sunrise is at five-ish. It was foggy. He went to the toilet. First, he was used to Indian-style toilets, which mean sitting down. The first time, he sat on a raised toilet. We are used to washing with water, but here there was toilet paper. He did not know what to do with the toilet paper. He was just sitting, thinking, "Okay, what to do?" Then, you know where children have small pots for the toilet? He took that pot. He checked that everyone was still sleeping, walked to the bathroom, filled the pot, came back, finished, and had a shower. He got ready. At 10:30 in the morning, the people got up and made breakfast for him. Slowly, slowly, that is how he went around Europe. He used to sleep at railway stations, have showers there, and make handmade posters for yoga classes. That is how we all are here now. This is the hard work he did for all of us. Now we come here and have a beautiful room to stay, a beautiful āśram for satsaṅg. We feel very blessed, happy, and honored. We thank Gurudev for this oasis he created for us. With Gurudev’s blessings and the blessings of the paramparā, everything is possible in life. In his meditation, he saw Mahāprabhujī. Mahāprabhujī asked what he would like. He said, "I would like to learn English and Sanskrit." Mahāprabhujī said, "So be it." That is how he learned English. So if we have true devotion towards our gurus, true dedication, if we do seva and follow our gurus' instructions, then everything is possible. That is why we are blessed to have you, Gurudev, with us. As we all know, in January 2025, the Kumbh Melā is coming up, this time in Prayāgarāj. The Kumbh Melā originated when the Asuras and Devas were churning the ocean. Many things emerged. Then the kumbh—a pot full of nectar—came out. As the devas were taking the nectar bowl, trying to hide it from the asuras, four drops fell in four different locations: Haridwar, Prayāgarāj, Nāsik, and Ujjain. In these four places, the Kumbh Melā happens every 12 years, at a specific constellation when Jupiter is aligned. It takes 12 years for Jupiter (Bṛhaspati) to orbit the Sun. When Jupiter is aligned in a certain way with the sun and moon, we have the Kumbh Melā. There was a person at a Kumbh Melā named Ramesh who traveled a lot. He had an alarm clock. He said, "Okay, I will set the alarm for 3:30 a.m. and be the first person to bathe in the Saṅgam." In the morning he woke up, went to the Ganges to bathe. Not many people were there; he was one of the only ones. Then he realized he had been traveling recently, and his alarm clock was on a different time setting. He had arrived slightly earlier. He had his bath and thought, "Yes, I am the first person to get rid of all my sins." The sādhus nearby were laughing and said, "Yes, yes, you are very good." So we are all blessed to attend the Kumbh Melā with Gurudev. We will see how preparations start soon, and there will be other announcements. Just information that it is coming up soon. Om Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ. "Svasti prajābhyaḥ..." means: May it be good. May good blessings be upon all the Prajā. Prajā means the people of the emperor. For us, the emperor is Gurudev, so the prajā is us. May all the prajā be blessed and happy. May all the cows and brahmins be happy and blessed—the knowers of the śāstras and the knowers of the nyāya (constitution or law). May there be peace, and may lawful activities happen in the world. May all beings be happy and blessed. This is the mantra I always sing before ending. We can also learn this. I will print it out today, and we can learn it. Om Śalāk Purjī Mahādeva kī Jai, Deva Dev Devaśvara Mahādeva kī Jai, Śadīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān kī Jai, Hindu Dharma Samanād Paramahaṁsa Svāmī Śrī Madhavānand Purjī Sat Gurudeva Bhagavān kī Jai, Viśva Guru Muḥammad Alīśvara Paramahaṁsa Svāmī Śrī Maheśvarānand Purjī Gurudeva kī Jai, Sat Sanātana Dharma kī Jai, Haraṇaṁava Pārvati Pate, Harahara Mahādeva Śambhu.