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Greetings also to Avatar Purījī, my friend. This is Guru Līlā. Yesterday after the satsaṅg, Avatar Purījī told me that I should do something today. Now he is coming, now he is going; I don’t know what’s going on. We’ll see. We will have three parts now. First, I will speak a little. Then, because the atmosphere was perhaps not so nice when he spoke about Kali Yuga, and we are all waiting for Swāmījī who seems not to be coming, I think to cheer up the atmosphere we will see a video from Swāmījī telling a funny story. Afterwards, we will have something more. Avatar Purī also said I should sometimes speak about brain waves, but because I use pictures from the internet and due to copyright, we cannot show them on the webcast. Then we will close the webcast but continue. Avatar Purī spoke yesterday, and also several times before, about the four aspects of Kṛpā—different aspects of kṛpā, of love. Who remembers? Deva Kṛpā, then Śāstra Kṛpā, then Guru Kṛpā, and then from ourselves—how is the name? Kuṭkī Kṛpā. This I still have to learn. Deva Kṛpā, he says, is the mercy of the gods. A main aspect is that we now have the chance to incarnate as a human, and only as a human do we have the chance of liberation. Śāstra—keeper, please, the pronunciation is very important. Śāstra, and not Śāstra. A śāstra, these are the holy scriptures. Śāstra, these are the weapons. So we mean śāstra. And what is śāstra, the holy scriptures? It is basically old Guru Vākya—the teachings of the gurus, which are now in the form of books, coming to us. The third is Guru Kṛpā. I think we are most familiar with that. And the fourth is Kuṭkī Kṛpā. Kuṭkī Kṛpā means own kṛpā: I give kṛpā to myself. I think that’s worth a little bit of thinking about. Swāmījī did not really use this word, but I know it comes from Holī Gurujī; he is always also using that. So, what does it really mean? Mercy—I give mercy to myself. To understand it, we can think about Guru Kṛpā because we are familiar with that. First of all, what is Kṛpā? It is a feeling, an emotion. It basically means the Guru loves the disciple, and then he gives his kṛpā. So, how does it happen? What actually triggers this Guru Kṛpā now? I think the input is very clear: it is our love for the Guru—our bhakti, our devotion. So now, what is the practical form of our bhakti, of our love? To bring it into a short formula: the disciple loves the Guru, and practically, it means he is doing Guru Seva. And from the side of the Guru, the Guru loves the disciple, and practically it means he gives Guru Kṛpā. So we speak about love. It means a very high vibration—like communicating on a very high level of energy. It’s not very likely that the guru will give Guru Kṛpā to a disciple who doesn’t follow, who attacks the guru and whatever all the time. So now we put this on Kuṭkī Kṛpā. That means, practically, now I love myself, and because of my love to myself, I give kṛpā to myself. I know that is not such an easy topic. I think for many of us, it may sound like a taboo. How I came to this topic was many years ago when I was in Jardin. You know, we have these 50 sayings of Mahāprabhujī, the golden teachings. Often we do, on a Sylvester also here in Strylky, like a lottery. So they are all printed, and you can choose one of them. And I have only one, very clearly. I think for three years in sequence, I always chose the same one; my subconsciousness chose the same one. And this was: “Love each and every living being, if not more, then at least as much as yourself.” When I started speaking about that in Jardin, I was shocked by one boy’s reaction. He said, “But I don’t love myself.” So honestly, ask yourself: do you really love yourself? That’s not such a small point. I think many of us are avoiding that because it sounds like ego. But love is a very high vibration; ego is a very low vibration. If I really love myself, how can I be happy if I see someone else suffering? Ego means taking; love means giving. If you really love, it’s like light shining out. You want everyone to be happy. And Avatar Purī said yesterday, “We cannot really love others if we don’t love ourselves.” So what is the easiest form of Kuṭkī Kṛpā? That is what we do after every meditation: rubbing the palms, awakening prāṇa, the divine energy, and then we do that, which is Kuṭkī Kṛpā. It means we give the divine energy to ourselves. If we can awaken the love to ourselves, it has even physical effect. I will tell you a story, a true story. One elderly lady had ALS disease—a very, very serious disease which leads to death. It became famous through the scientist Stephen Hawking. He had ALS in the slow form, so he could not really speak anymore, but still he made some things so that they could write books. One girl in our Hamburg group, Ponyma, had the quick form of ALS; unfortunately, within one year, she died. So there was one old lady who was diagnosed with ALS, and she observed already how her body was somehow fading away, with less and less power. So she decided: in the morning, she stood in front of a mirror and looked at her body. And she said, “What is really beautiful on my body?” And she said, “Oh, my eyes, they are beautiful.” And now, that’s the important point: she gave a lot of love to her eyes. It is high energy; that is healing energy. Next morning, she was thinking, “What more do I like?” Oh, my mouth. So she sent love energy now to her eyes and her mouth. Next day, another point. Next day, another point. So she expanded her love to more and more parts of her body. And in the end, she sent love to her whole body. And she continued with this for a long time. And she healed herself. So simple. Love is the medicine. It’s a very practical example of Kuṭkī Kṛpā. So this is now really just a physical example, but it shows very clearly the effect of when we send love to ourselves, even to our own body. But as I said, for many of us, it is like a taboo: “No, I cannot, I should not, because I am so bad. I know so much bad things about myself. How can I love myself?” So now, how can we come to this self-love? Avatar Purījī yesterday also said that the first step is: I must accept myself as I am. That is a big spiritual step already. I remember many years ago, I had a tour with someone from Hamburg. We went to a yoga seminar a long way, and we talked. And she said to me, “You know why I am with Swāmījī? Because he is the first person in my life who accepts me as I am.” That’s not a small thing. Not accepting means actually sending negative energy to myself. But now I know things are not right with me. So, what is now the step to come to this accepting? We must somehow inquire about the background—how it happened that I or someone else has these qualities which are not so nice. So we try to understand, to understand ourselves: how it happened, how I am now, that I became like that. You know where we are going? Self-inquiry meditation. That’s exactly the point of Swāmījī’s teaching in our yoga system. The first step is accept; the second step is understand, or try to understand. And the more you understand, the more you can accept; and the more you accept, the more you can understand. And when you really understand, you will come naturally to a point that you want to do something—to change something, to help. That you want to give, and one form of giving is forgiving: to forgive myself. So I understand: I developed these not so good things. Now I understand it, I accept it, and now I start to work on it. This is for me the essence of Swāmījī’s teachings in three words: accept, understand, and give. And this is also the title of one of the oldest videos from Swāmījī from maybe 30 years ago: “Accept, Understand, and Give.” So this is the inner process of how we can come to this self-love, how we can develop it. Self-love is not so easy, but it is necessary. It’s an important step in our spiritual life. Only then can you really realize that Mahāprabhujī is teaching love for each and every living being as much as for yourself. So that is how I understand Kuṭkī Kṛpā. Okay. About Hathārpūrījī, do you agree? Okay, then I would like to tell one story, referring because Avatar Purījī also spoke about satsaṅg and kusaṅg. Avatar Purījī also says, “I love your real stories—I mean practical, how to say, true stories.” This is supposed to be a true story, but I cannot guarantee it because it is 500 years ago. But I mean, I found this story in several books, and in one book it was very exactly described: who—so not just guru and disciple, but who is a guru, who is a disciple? It’s a story about Guru Nānak, the founder of the Sikh religion. He lived about 500 years ago. Two of his disciples lived in one village, and they were both moneylenders and they were friends. One day they heard the news that Guru Nānak, their guru, would come to their village and would have satsaṅg there for several days. They were very happy about that, and they made an appointment that every afternoon, when the satsaṅg is, they would go together to the satsaṅg. So they started together. But on the way, one of them suddenly remembered, “Oh, I have some urgent business.” The friend said, “Okay, in the evening we can meet. I will tell you a little bit what was in the satsaṅg.” So now one went to the satsaṅg, and the other one went to the prostitute because that was his urgent business—his important matter. Okay, well… We could put it in the category of Kusaṅg, I think, no? So in the evening they meet, and he got a little bit to know also about the satsaṅg. But it was everyday satsaṅg, so the next day they started again. And since it was satsaṅg, and unfortunately he had urgent business again, so again, one went to the satsaṅg, one went the other way. So that continued now for several days, always the same story. Only, it happened now one day the prostitute was not at home. So this man went home earlier, and he was now bored, sitting at home and waiting for his friend to come and tell him a little bit. And 500 years ago, it was not houses as we are used to; it was like huts from clay and with a clay ground. So, he was sitting bored. In his hand, he had a stick. As you know, often with a pencil we make a little bit something like this when we are bored. So he had a stick, and he was always making boom, boom… on the ground. And suddenly there was a resonance—bang! What’s that? Obviously, his stick was touching something in the underground of his hut, and he didn’t know. So now he got curious and started digging a little bit. And then it turned out there was a maṭkā—these are these pots from clay for cooling water. And the maṭkās always have a lid to cover them. So he took out the lid, and there was gold—a big gold coin. Now he got greedy. A whole pot full of gold—that will be something. But unfortunately, underneath were only coal, black. His hand got dirty, but still, one gold coin—quite something. So he was very happy, and now waiting for his friend. He had to tell him something. But his friend had a little bit different story. Satsaṅg went late, and it was already dark. And when his friend from the satsaṅg, on the way back, now went through a dark path, there were some thorns on the ground. You know, in Rajasthan we have many thorny bushes; the thorns can be up to five centimetres long. So he stepped now with his foot in one of these big thorns—very painful, and it was bleeding. So now, not so easy—he was, how to say, when he is not going properly, limping. I don’t know the English word for that—limping. He was now limping home. And then they met. The one was shining, happy. And the other one is in pain. And then he asked, “What happened to you?” He told his story to his friend. “What happened to you?” And he told his story with gold. And now both were confused, because they were disciples of Guru Nānak; they had already learned something about the law of karma: do good, and you will experience good; do bad, and you will suffer. The situation was: the one who went to the satsaṅg suffered, and the one who did it the other way found the gold. So now they were both confused. And now, the next day, for the first time, they really went together to ask their guru—a little bit, you can say, some kind of provocation: “What are you telling us? It’s all wrong.” And the guru, you know, he can see the aura; he can see the background of what happens with our karma from previous lives. And Guru Nānak was smiling. He turned to the one who had found the gold and said, “In previous lives, you did a lot of sevā and were helping and serving and donating money and everything. And it was your good karma that in your hut was this pot full of gold. It was yours. It was there all the time, waiting for the day you would find it. But every day you went to the prostitute, one of these gold coins turned into coal. But you know, our present actions cannot completely destroy our old karma. A little bit always remains, so therefore one gold coin remains. That’s the only thing that is left over.” And then he became more serious and turned to the other disciple. “You know that you were a very rude ruler, exploiting the people, torturing the people. It was your karma in this life to suffer a lot and to be killed with a spear. But because you went to satsaṅg every day, that bad karma of yours was purified. So with this small suffering—the thorn in your foot—now your old karma is purified.” And they both understood a little better about the law of karma and how it works.